Monday, July 30, 2007

Deep questions

1. Is it wrong to call my son "critter"? (Consider, we do live in the South)

2. When did invite become a noun?

3. If an entire generation were raised as vegetarians, would anyone buy fake meat?

4. Am I stealing from Steven Wright, or is the ironic-question-as-[attempted] comedic device in the public domain?

5. Are there any wrong answers?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

What would possess you to call your son a critter?

Anonymous said...

I'm guessing that anonymous is not from the south. Think of "cletus the slack-jawed yokul" from the Simpsons, and think of him calling his kids "critters." I don't know if he did on the show, but I'm sure that at some point, perhaps off camera, he has.

By the way, Philip, my answer to your question about calling Seth a critter is subtly embedded in the paragraph above.

Anonymous said...

I happen to think the term critter is a little odd for your child, but I'm not a Southerner nor have I ever lived in the South so I may just not get it. With that being said, I don't necessarily think it's wrong, just odd.

I'm not sure when it became acceptable, if it ever really has, to use invite as a noun. But, it's listed on dictionary.com as both a verb and a noun.

From Wordnet - noun
1. a colloquial expression for invitation; "he didn't get no invite to the party"

Well, I guess if it's written on the internet it must be true so maybe it has become acceptable to use it. Oh wait, we've had this argument before - - do I need to remind you about WW and the Loch Ness monster? :) So, even though it's listed on the internet as a noun, it still doesn't really make it acceptable.

Anonymous said...

critter's acceptable, it's "varmint" that you should steer clear of

On behalf of grammar hotline, I also suggest steering clear of using invite as a noun. It's just a slang abbreviation of invitation. Kind of like how disconnect is a verb (disconnection would be the noun), but no one uses that.

Joe said...

They have the Internet down South now? Crazy.