drive-by grammar nazi!

[rone]

"If/When worst comes to worst."  Worst is worst; it has already come to worst.  Worse comes to worst.

Comments

[pennyhill.livejournal.com]

Too much sugar, eh?

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Syntactic sugar!

[pennyhill.livejournal.com]

OMG - I wish someone would call ME that!
Bwahahahaha.

[manfire.livejournal.com]

S'nTAC-TIC SUGAAAAAAAAAARRRRRR...

Sugar KISS-SE-e-es....

[littleamerica.livejournal.com]

Augh! I'll see your puffy lips and bedhead hair and raise you a drum machine named Echo.

[doctroid.livejournal.com]

Good luck with your campaign, but I fear most offenders will not tow the line.

[whipartist.livejournal.com]

It hurts! MAKE IT STOP!

[sandollar17.livejournal.com]

Your propensity for grammar is quite impressive. I must admit, it makes me a little jealous.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Are you jealously guarding grammar, or do you envy my grammarian skills? CHOOSE WISELY.

[sandollar17.livejournal.com]

um...

[vatine]

Surely it is "bad - worse - worst" and "worst - worster - worsted" (like in the wool)?

[cheesetruck.livejournal.com]

No, it's wurst, like the sausage.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

I don't have to take that sort of crap from a sambo!

[khrister.livejournal.com]

A sambo? I thought he was married?

[vatine]

So did I...

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

BAH! Fine, ex-sambo.

YEW ARRR

[vardissakheli.livejournal.com]

RRRRRONG (http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=19980713) (and a century too late), both historically and logically. The expression does not mean that something already bad becomes worse; it means that the worst possible scenario comes into being, when things may be just fine right now, and often is meant to indicate that even that worst state is not so bad.

One might say that it's more properly just "(if/when) worst come(s) to," and the second "worst" is redundant (and sylleptic).

Re: YEW ARRR

[doctroid.livejournal.com]

Rone's wrong? Someone tell Satan to cover his tomato plants.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

IDIOMS R ST00PID.

Anyway, what you linked to suggests that it can go both ways. BOTH WAYS. The worst has come to pass: English has become the de facto lingua franca. Now bring me my water bottle, it's time for Matlock!

Re: YEW ARRR

[nothings.livejournal.com]

Thanks for saving me the effort of looking that up.

Dear Rone: please start reading languagelog or some other actually-informed source rather than drawing on random "I am an expert at the English language because I sure use it good well" sources, so that you can stick your grammar nazism to things that deserve it, like "it's/its", and not things that don't deserve it, like "worst comes to worst", or, apparently, "literally" (http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002611.html).

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Turning something stupid into something meaningful through usage is not something that appeals to me. I don't care if Jesus Christ Himself used "worst comes to worst" on the fucking Cross and two thousand years of usage makes it OK; it sounds stupid, therefore it is stupid. There are almost always better and more sensible ways to say things than to persist in some idiotic idiom.

Besides, if i start reading languagelog, what am i going to do here? Parrot it? Preposterous. Besides, i like it when you people contradict me; i LEARN something that way. Even if it's stupid.

[nothings.livejournal.com]

See, you act like you think 'worst comes to worst' is a retcon from 'worse comes to worst', but is it? Or is 'worse comes to worst' a retcon from the other, from people like you who thought 'it doesn't make any sense'? Because if the former, fuck you, language only makes sense THROUGH USAGE. Like, take the seven letters plus space "F U C K [space] Y O U". What the hell does that mean? You better not take any offense at being cursed at because it's just a bunch of meaningless syllabation.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Man, you and your dime-store nihilism. I'm not even concerned about the retconism of either phrase; i'm concerned strictly with the fact that "worst comes to worst" sounds stupid, and "worse comes to worst" makes some sort of sense.

"Language only makes sense through usage" is very true only in the most superficial sense.

But, yeah, "fuck you" doesn't make any grammatical sense, either.

[nothings.livejournal.com]

"Language only makes sense through usage" is very true only in the most superficial sense.

rone, meet "coining".

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Man, don't get me started on economics... i'm not very good at that.

[coldsleep.livejournal.com]

No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,
More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.
Comforter, where, where is your comforting?
Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?

Whoops. Probably didn't need 4 whole lines of Gerard Manley Hopkins.

The post just reminded me of that poem for some reason. And. Uh. That's it.

[littleamerica.livejournal.com]

Well I certainly learned something. I had understood this to mean "when the worst [of one thing] comes to (meet) the worst [of another thing]," essentially a worst-case version of "being in the wrong place at the wrong time" or (forgive me) a bivariate case of a Perfect Storm.

Thanks.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

You know, that's one interpretation i could totally live with.

So un-worst-est!

[mononeuron.livejournal.com]

> it has already come to worst.

Impossible.

Things can ALways get worse.