Digital Sidhe ([info]digitalsidhe) wrote in [info]dot_pedantic,
@ 2004-10-20 15:33:00
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Current mood: angry

Must... Restrain... Fist of Death
A recent ZDNet editorial, in paragraph 4, includes the sentence: "In fact, the many hardcore server administrators would just assume do away with a lot of the ease-of-anything frills in return for a mean, lean, simple, command-prompt driven Web, database, e-mail, directory or database application server." (Emphasis added to make it easy to find the error.)

I haven't bothered to read paragraph 5. If this guy wants me to take his opinion seriously, why doesn't he learn his own native tongue?

And it really bugs me that, if I were to post a correction in the Talkbacks at the bottom of the page, someone would be sure to tell me that I was just nit-picking and it didn't really matter.

At least I have the consolation of not having to tell anyone here what was wrong with that phrasing.


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The wily trope.
[info]chalepa_ta_kala
2004-10-20 03:54 pm UTC (link)
just assume do away with

I can't even figure out the rationale behind that, um, turn of phrase. Just assume doesn't even mean anything in that context. Just as soon, although idiomatic, makes some sense.

Of course, I'm assuming that the writer's intent was to communicate. If not, well, I guess I've just made an ASS out of U and...well, just U, really.

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Turn?
[info]jabber
2004-10-20 04:13 pm UTC (link)
Folded, spindled and mutilated, more like. :)

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Re: The wily trope.
[info]oneironaut
2004-10-20 06:24 pm UTC (link)
It's an eggcorn. The originator was probably thinking of 'assume' in the sense of 'to take upon oneself' or 'to undertake the duties of (an office)' and probably didn't know the wording of the expression at all, rather than knowing and trying to improve it, since it's a shortened form of an idiom that isn't even itself literally meaningful.

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Re: The wily trope.
[info]chalepa_ta_kala
2004-10-20 11:43 pm UTC (link)
It's an eggcorn.

What a delightful site; thank you.

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Re: The wily trope.
[info]hermione_lupin
2004-11-05 08:13 am UTC (link)
There we go. Much like this 'bald-faced lie' I keep reading, no matter that it doesn't make a lick of sense. Curiously similar to the 'boldfaced lie' I sometimes hear.

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[info]stevenredux
2004-10-20 05:50 pm UTC (link)
Send him my editor's icon.

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[info]sarmisse
2004-10-20 08:15 pm UTC (link)
Perhaps he meant to write "would just as soon do away with..."

That is a real phrase, isn't it?

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[info]digitalsidhe
2004-10-20 08:57 pm UTC (link)
I'm sure he did mean "just as soon". But what came out isn't exactly a typo... the O and E keys, for example, are nowhere near each other. If it said "just as soom" or "just as soob", I wouldn't have minded. (I'd have wondered if the article had been spell checked or proofread, but that's different.)

No, I think he actually meant to type "just assume"... but he should have meant to type "just as soon", dangit.

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[info]jargon
2004-10-20 10:00 pm UTC (link)
The only possible, logical explanation: He was using a speech transcription system (ie Dragon NaturallySpeaking) and spoke "just as soon" so quickly that the software picked it up as "just assume".. and never reread his article for sense, just trusted his spelchekr.

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[info]stevenredux
2004-10-21 04:29 am UTC (link)
Which is no better. Worse in some ways.

It's guys like him that give guys like me (i.e., tech "journalists") a bad name. And, believe me, we don't need the help.

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[info]peregrin8
2004-10-21 05:56 am UTC (link)
Actually I've seen other cases where a relatively non-intuitive idiom gets turned into an eggcorn (many thanks to this thread for giving me that word!) by people who have heard it said but never noticed it in print. I don't think software is necessarily the culprit.

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[info]feonixrift
2004-10-20 11:30 pm UTC (link)
Sorry, I got stuck at "the many".

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