Bad, bad Bill.

[darcydodo]

I was just looking at the excerpt from Bill Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words on Amazon, and I came across "admit to," which he says is incorrect. This did not seem right to me, so I went and looked in the OED. The OED says: "II.2.e. admit to (something): to acknowledge (a weakness, etc.); to confess to (doing or being something)." More to the point, that's the only case in which it admits that definition for "admit." (My usage here demonstrates what BB was presumably actually thinking of, but none of his examples was accurate for this case.)

If Bryson had his way and deleted those "to"s, we'd end up with Jesse Jackson allowing someone to father a child on a staffer, some other country raiding Angola with South Africa's permission, etc.

I repeat: Bad, bad Bill.

Comments

[monanotlisa.livejournal.com]

*g* Quite fine, thank you-- all wired after WriterCon, sad that it's over but looking forward to meeting you!

You know, I thought maybe I'm just on US time...but it turns out that my internal clock is simply yet permanently set on "nocturnal"...

[darcydodo]

I don't think you can really say "meeting you" when you've already met someone, unless you're using it in a sentence such as "I'll be meeting you at the bus stop," which obviously has an entirely different connotation. "Seeing you" would be more apt.

[monanotlisa.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. These bus stops. Dodgy places, tsk-tsk!

[darcydodo]

Not that sort of connotation!

Though maybe that, too. ;)

[inkgeist.livejournal.com]

Or "I'll be meeting you at 6" right? Otherwise its 'meeting with' right? All of a sudden I'm paranoid about my english - just dont tell my students that. They'd have a FIELD DAY

[darcydodo]

Yeah, "meeting you at 6" works, too. "Meeting with" is, presumably, always for a meeting about something, rather than meeting up with someone.

Anyway, monanotlisa is German. You're practically American. ;) (Or did you end up getting your citizenship after all?)

[inkgeist.livejournal.com]

Ack, NO! I'm still a resident alien (explains a lot I know) and dont even get me started on the INS now known by a million different names. And while I have been here a while, I did live in both Richmond and East Oakland, both not known for their grammatically correct English - so I'm juss sayin'