[sf-lug] (forw) Re: SF-LUG meeting notes of Sunday March 1, 2020

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Bobbie Sellers (bliss-sf4ever at dslextreme.com):

>     Actually in informal usage it means "hard to learn" but in
> technically exact language it means "quick to learn".
> <https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/6209/what-is-meant-by-steep-learning-curve#6226>

(You call it informal usage.  I call it inadvertent comedy.)

Translation:  Once enough people make a usage mistake, many start 
making excuses for it.  This is the same process by which many people
have started thinking 'enormity' means largeness.



>From rick Tue May  4 15:49:16 2004
Date: Tue, 4 May 2004 15:49:16 -0700
To: kusc at kusc.org
Subject: Arnold Bax and "enormity"

[Kind folks at KUSC: Would you be kind enough to pass this along to 
Jim Svejda?  Thank you.]

Dear Mr. Svejda:

A couple of weeks ago, I was enjoying "The Record Shelf" on one of my
local public radio stations (KALW), and you went into an engaging set of
anecdotes about Arnold Bax.  Speaking of the initially unnamed composer,
you made reference to the "enormity of his output".

Oh dear.  "Enormity", you see, does not mean hugeness.  It denotes the
quality of being greatly and infamously wicked:  You might therefore
speak of the enormity of the Third Reich's crimes, but the word has no
obvious application in musicology beyond, say, the works of Andrew
Lloyd Webber.  


Which reminds me:  I once heard a special broadcast of The Record Shelf
in which you reached for enormity and managed instead to be endearing
and hilarious:  It was a (2-hour?) pastiche of clips of wildly
incompatible pieces from various operas, one of which I remember was
from Mussorgsky's "Boris Godunov", in which I think you'd stitched
together some unlikely plot a la "What's Up, Tiger Lily?"  I used to
keep several off-the-air cassette tapes of it in my car, but the risk
to other drivers from bouts of helpless mirth was too great.

Thank you!

-- 
Cheers,     Founding member of the Hyphenation Society, a grassroots-based, 
Rick Moen   not-for-profit, locally-owned-and-operated, cooperatively-managed,
rick at linuxmafia.com     modern-American-English-usage-improvement association.