Monday, August 09, 2010

Bad verbing, worse human: 'to euthanisia'

Wonkette brings us this photo:

Wonkette indicates that the photo is from the Austin airport garage. Pretty complex paint job -- two color! And pretty steady lettering. (You ever tried writing this kind of stuff on this kind of surface? Ain't easy.) But then 'to euthanasia' for 'to euthanize' and 'whom' for 'who', in the span of nine words. Almost makes you wonder if it's real, in the relevant sense ... . Hey, maybe it's more brilliance from the Arizona Department of Education.

3 comments:

Mark Louden said...

I especially like "whom" for "who", which is a super example of syntactic hypercorrection. From time to time I google strings like "people whom I believe are" and never fail to find hits from interesting sources, such as this one from the British House of Commons (2006):

"I am sure the Minister will say that they are doing this anyway, but I really want to see the pressure put on the people whom I believe are to blame for the fact that the Assembly is not up and running yet."

For the peevologist who would sniff that this is not surprising coming from the House of Commons in the 21st century, here's something from the House of Lords from 1831:

"The next name on the petition is that of a gentleman whom I believe is known to the Noble Marquess."

Nate C-K said...

Looks like they could've hired an illegal immigrant for $2 an hour to do a better paint job.

Mr. Verb said...

Beautiful.