Re: In love with a word

[Geoff Lane <geoff -at- gjctech -dot- co -dot- uk>]

On Thursday, January 5, 2006, Anthony Kelly wrote;

> Oh no, what have we started?!!

> Actually I'm "oop north" in Sheffield as well, so that would suggest it's 
> nothing to do with region and more to do with my personal dislikes. Or 
> perhaps your colleagues are more well-to-do and "quaint" than mine :)
---

Perhaps its more a temporal difference.

Whilst "among" and "amongst" are exactly equivalent, "while" and
"whilst" are not. "While" has uses as a verb, a noun, an adverb, and a
conjunction, but "whilst" only has the latter two.

I'm "old-school" (early fifties, but not as old as Dick:) and in
formal documentation, unless writing for left-pondian colonials, use
"whilst" as a conjunction or adverb because it's the more specific of
the two words for that context.

That said, things change and I have noticed how we're losing the
language. We're becoming more sloppy. Even the teaching profession is
(IME) becoming sloppy. For example, a few years ago, I found this in
my son's school handbook:

"Drugs: the school will not condone the abuse of illegal drugs."

The Headmaster could not understand my dismay and insisted that,
because the Head of English wrote those words, that text was correct.

-- 
Geoff
Cornwall, UK

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