Re: prodigious vs. prolific

This is just my point! Obviously prodigious is being used in these
examples as a synonym for prolific. You say it's wrong, ok. But that's
how it's being used. It doesn't make sense to write in the same
sentence that a writer is prodigious because he has written many books,
if you don't mean to say he was prolific.

As for losing the bet, because it's not in the dictionary, well,
language is always one step its documentors. In Bryson's book he talks
a lot about how it sometimes took centuries for a word to be printed in
the dictionary, long after its use was accepted. Shakespeare is
credited with inventing many words for the simple reason that they
don't appear in the dictionaries of that era. But researchers have
found many of these words in other documents from the era, so Old Bill
was 0,00001% less of a genius than we thought.

Anyway, it's been a fun chat!

Bob


athel...@yahoo wrote:
sygsix@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
Well I have to say I disagree with you, or at the very least think that
this is one of those cases where "officially" the definition is not
listed in the dictionary but in fact it is used in that way and through
use, becomes a definition. In Bill Bryson's book about the english
language he sites hundreds of examples of this happening.

Which is why, I suppose, I was able to find these links on a quick
Google search:

Galbraith was a prodigious writer, analyst and commentator.
He wrote more than 48 books ...

In this and your other examples you seem to be assuming that because
two statements occur consecutively they mean the same thing. It would
be perfectly possible for Galbraith to be a prodigious writer even if
he had only written one book (like Emily Brontë, for example), or to
fail to have been a prodigious writer despite writing a great deal
(Joseph Stalin springs to mind, but you might prefer L. Ron Hubbard or
Barbara Cartland). Thus it is possible that the person you quote was
simply stating two things about Galbraith with implying that one
followed from the other. Maybe the 48 books were intended to illustrate
the prodigious nature of Galbraith's writing, but in that case it is
curious that his activities as analyst and commentator get interposed:
how do the 48 books illustrate the prodigious nature of these?

Of course, words do change their meanings over time, but it's one thing
to accept that as an observed fact and quite another to say that there
are no rules at all and that any word can be used to mean anything.
You'll need to come back in 100 years time to see if broadening the
meaning of "prodigious" to mean prolific gets adopted into the
language, but in 2006 you lose your bet.

athel

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: pronounciations at www.m-w.com
    ... >>> mouseclicks. ... > Unless your computer is on (and online) all the time, ... For you to conclude from a handicapped 30-second edge that "Books are vastly ... > of dictionaries and an encyclopedia. ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Donating Collections to Libraries
    ... language as i've collected, whether general or specialized. ... > meanings probably are of interest to research libraries, ... The Bloustein Collection consists of a couple hundred old dictionaries ... largely a museum display of antique books, ...
    (rec.collecting.books)
  • Re: Foreigner(s)
    ... I agree that it is likely that they are native speakers, ... I have several grammar books of English - and several dictionaries ... An example of this could be the use of the word "muster". ...
    (alt.usage.english)
  • Re: Collecting Dictionaries
    ... As for bookbinding, I have the reference books, the know-how, and most ... You definitely have way more dictionaries than I do. ... "If you can't smile don't go in. ... Do you know how to repair old books? ...
    (rec.collecting.books)
  • Re: Pick query languages compared to SQL
    ... With regard to the sturm-und-drang on dictionaries, ... the LIST statement? ... record id of BOOKS is formed from the id of the corresponding TITLES ...
    (comp.databases.pick)