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Your jokes are not delicate creations of genius, as your delusions of grandeur (or should that be adequacy?) would have you boast. They are less subtle than the electric chair. In truth, they are merely childish and dull – as is your insistence on using multiple exclamation marks.
“The third edition isn't due until the year 2010, so I guess we'll have to wait awhile to see if its editors "miss- quoted [sic] a line, or quoted a mistaken use of 'rantings'. Unless you want to do the work of looking up the reference they gave."
That last sentence is in an incomplete form as it stands, and is also illogical. Supposing you looked up the reference and found it to have been quoted precisely, you would still not know if it was a valid word, making this a pointless exercise.
I suppose I should be flattered that you have begun to imitate my practice of using the Latin adverb “sic”. Oh, the gratification of passing on knowledge and new skills! Unless you can prove that you have set a precedent in previous posts by using the term, don’t bother to pretend otherwise.
“We” won’t need to wait until 2010 to discover whether or not an error was made. I can see it for the nonsense it is, just as I can see you for the second-rate “linguist” you pretend to be.
Your quibble over the literal meaning of “literal”, right or wrong (I’ll get to this shortly), has no bearing on my point that strictly, “anti-Semitism” ought to refer to all Semites, if it were not now impossible to do so because of universal misuse. Thus, although its accepted use to mean Jews only is “appropriate”, it remains an inexact use of English.
Why you should choose to take just one shade of definition for the word “literal”, or attribute the one you did as the one I had intended, I do not know. Perhaps it comes down to your scant knowledge of linguistics.
Citing your own source (Merriam-Webster’s C.D.) of the definition of “literal”, there are several variants. In full:
lit.er.al adj [ME, fr. MF, fr. ML litteralis, fr. L, of a letter, fr. littera letter] (14c) 1 a: according with the letter of the scriptures b: adhering to fact or to the ordinary construction or primary meaning of a term or expression: actual <liberty in the ~ sense is impossible -- B. N. Cardozo> c: free from exaggeration or embellishment <the ~ truth> d: characterized by a concern mainly with facts <a very ~ man> 2: of, relating to, or expressed in letters 3: reproduced word for word: exact, verbatim <a ~ translation> -- lit.er.al.i.ty n -- lit.er.al.ness n literal n (1622): a small error usu. of a single letter (as in writing)
Perhaps I was referring to the adherence to the “primary meaning of a term”, as regarding “anti” and its conjunct “Semite”.
So you see, quite other than your narrow use of the root meaning of “literal”: (2) “of, relating to, or expressed in letters”, from the Medieval Latin root “litteralis”, there are other valid forms, as is the case with most words. That OED that you slam your tiny prick in so repeatedly would require far fewer volumes if there weren’t.
Oh, and it is preposterous even for an imaginary tentacled creature, such as the one you presented (you would draw upon a cartoon), to slither.
My mental image of Illinois_Stan after another mauling:
http://www.vomitus.com/museum/drawings/baby_shutup.html
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