Re: prodigious vs. prolific


sygsix@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
This is just my point! Obviously prodigious is being used in these
examples as a synonym for prolific. You say it's wrong, ok.

Yes, there is such a thing as a "common mistake". The fact that a
mistake is common does not mean that it is not a mistake.

But that's
how it's being used.

So? Bread fishes sleep dreams oddly familiar dregs. Who mistakes
severance pay litmus testing error?

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.

The fact that a mistake is common does not mean that it is not a
mistake.

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!

No, 'fun' is not an adjective.


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

.

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