Else’s Elses. Unparseable or Unparsable?
March 6th 2011 20:57
Dictionaries don’t seem to be as inclusive and exhaustive as they used to be. It seems to me that once a week I run into some word or phrase that is already in fairly common usage that Microsoft Word or the various spell checkers I encounter online say I am misusing or misspelling.
“Else’s” comes to mind. As in “somebody else’s problem.” As far as I know, it’s a perfectly legitimate expression. When I Google it I see others have used it as well. But then again maybe Google is the graveyard of the English language and we are all of use who use the contraction in this way abusing the language. One source asked me if I meant “elses.” Who knows? Maybe I did.
Well, what about “unparseable” as in “that string is unparseable?” I was given “unparsable” as an alternative and told in effect that neither is a word. Is this all a result of our brave new virtual cyber reality? Are we the pseudo technical too careless or are the dictionary makers just too slow? Are we too quick to accept new words or to adapt to new jargon and new ways to use old words?
Well, even if we wanted to change our ways that cat is already out of the bag. I have only recently figured out what a “meme” is. Sort of. Everyone else is even quicker to jump on the new lexicon than I am.
To paraphrase the bard: What a Brave New World that has such people in it.
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