Let's just set aside any thoughts about language and linguistics and consider this as pure entertainment. Is this level of inconsistency some kind of literary game or related perversion?
I play the super-prescriptivist in my column but actually violate all my own rules by never looking stuff up, not writing clearly and failing to be consistent in ways that a wet-behind-the-ears copy-editing intern would catch. Oh what rich and subversive irony!Seems hard to imagine — he's just not that smart or sophisticated. Or is he this bad as an entertainer? Mrs. Verb (not her real name) reads murder mysteries and I think it's safe to assume that she'd toss out an author who was this sloppy. Hmmm. maybe he IS consistent at a certain level.
2 comments:
OK, but does Safire use 'tsunami of tsuris' as [ts] alliteration? Or [s]? Or just visual?
Oh, I'm sure it's just for visual effect, it's not exactly a very smart expression (unlike "curled-lip service"). The OED prefers "tsores", which could not as easily be packed into a multiethnic figure of speech.
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