Universalis, your very own breviary in pixels...

Sunday 22 February 2015

Humpty Dumpty says, in a scornful tone, "When I use a word .....

....it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less."

Do they pay the "writers" at the Daily Beast? Are they receiving money because they are putatively professionals who know what words mean, and how to string them together to make them mean something even more?

Maybe it's me.... ("perhaps it is I"?) My grammar and diction are pretty careless, my vocabulary is shrinking, and I've no doubt been incorrect in what I thought a word meant more than once...

BUT --

The linked piece says that a comic's jokes "explicitly imply" something.

"Explicitly"?

"Imply"?

Um, no.

At least, I think... because if I say you "imply" I am (quite explicitly,) saying that you are saying something implicitly.

Right?

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