On 15 Dec 2004, at 21:12, Ray Saintonge wrote:
I have a pet linguistic peeve in this debate. Please don't mix up the words "systemic" and "systematic". Something is "systemic" if it has become built into a system. Something is "systematic" if it is done in a structured and organized way.
YAY for linguistic nitpicking! ;-) The enormousness of the enormity of using ''enormity'' to mean ''enormous''... ;-D
Seriously now, I am SO with you! :-)
-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]] www.ropersonline.com
PS:
And then there was this incident--as Dave Barry would say, I am not making this up--where some US employee was actually FIRED--ie, he had to go to court to get his job and good reputation back--purely because he had said that doing such-and-such would be niggardly. Apparently the colleague had never ever heard of the words "niggard", "niggardly" or "niggardliness" and REFUSED to listen to an explanation, so your man had to go to the courts to get his colleague--who was totally convinced of having heard a racial slur--to actually ''have a look in the dictionary'' and duly discover that the term had more to do with Scrooge McDuck than with skin colo(u)r. Meh. Words fail.