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Since when did 'best' start to mean 'favourite'?

 
  

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Olulabelle
22:18 / 08.06.05
Oh my goodness I've just realised I do the 'best' thing. I say to my son, "You're my best boy." But then my Grandma used to call me her best girl, and she was from Liverpool.

Welcome to family history night.

I like bare. It makes sense in a "that's so wrong yet strangely right" kind of way. If you think about it.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
08:42 / 09.06.05
Isn't a best boy the head page-boy at a wedding?

This language business is compulicated.
 
 
Axolotl
08:51 / 09.06.05
Isn't the best boy also the head electrician on a film set?
 
 
Ariadne
09:02 / 09.06.05
I've never, ever heard the 'bare' thing - maybe they don't do it up here? Maybe I just avoid yoof? Who knows. Is it maybe a corruption of 'very' - as in 'ver', ver' deep'.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
09:12 / 09.06.05
I'm so bare deeply mediocre I have nothing to offer on the more salient points of this rudely clueless thread.
 
 
Jack The Bodiless
10:30 / 09.06.05
I am absolutely smitten with how alterity, after ranting about the state of the school system and poor grammar wit de yoot then says "besides, Destiny's Child sucks!"

Dude, they totally suck. Had Destiny a child (called Kid Kismet, two-fisted scourge of crime, catchphrase "I knew you were going to say that" a la Stallone's Dredd), he or she might possibly suck. And they don't even suck! They rock!

Money - it's OK, you can't be deeply mediocre.
 
 
Char Aina
10:38 / 09.06.05
i think it was flyboy trying to be funny, hey.
like, all deadpan and shit.

meanness is the new cameraderie, or something equally meaningless.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
11:05 / 09.06.05
I don't think you quite understand what deadpan means, toksy.

Elsewhere... back on pedantry, I'm wondering about "Since when did 'best' start to mean 'favourite'?". Since when denotes time after which. Starting to mean something, however, is a single action - one cannot carry on starting. So, the correct usage would either be "When did 'best' start to mean..." or "Since when has 'best' come to mean...", maybe.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
12:54 / 09.06.05
See? Compulicated.

Anyway, this entire thread just shows why Barbelith is my best forum.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
13:18 / 09.06.05
Starting to mean something, however, is a single action

Weeeeellll, it could be argued that it's a process, really. The starting of the meaning continuing up to some arbitrary usage by, say, a set proportion of a population, or whatever. Until it reaches this quota, it could still be said to be in the process of starting to mean something, with the provision that it may cease to continue meaning that in the future, depending on how things pan out, or actually mean that thing, that starting having progressed to really meaning.

Whatchooreckon? And don't you have work to do neither? (That's knee-ther, as well, not nigh-ther, OK?)
 
 
Char Aina
13:19 / 09.06.05
without looking it up...
is it not just serious delivery?
usually of ridiculous/untrue lines for comic effect?

i was suggesting that flyboy was playing when he said "deeply mediocre" but delivered said witticism as though he meant it.

i'll go and look it up now.

in a book.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
13:32 / 09.06.05
Sort of yes, sort of no. I was deadpanning. Flyboy was frying panning. The kids were panhandling.
 
 
Char Aina
13:46 / 09.06.05
i reckon i might need trepanning...
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
14:38 / 09.06.05
 
 
Multiple Man
15:07 / 09.06.05
You would think at least they would teach critical thought, but noooo!

Incorrect. Just 2 weeks past I had my AS Critical Thinking exam.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
15:13 / 09.06.05
Apropos of...WOT? Exactly?
 
 
Saveloy
15:30 / 09.06.05
What about this, eh?
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
19:02 / 09.06.05
Prince attacks 'voguish' GCSE text message studies

Matthew Taylor, education correspondent
Wednesday June 8, 2005
The Guardian


The Prince of Wales attacked "short-term, fashionable" trends in education yesterday which he said were threatening the "foundations of civilised existence".

Prince Charles told a gathering of teachers they were performing "daily miracles" in the classroom but the "voguish preoccupation" with making subjects relevant - including plans to allow children to study text messaging as part of GCSE English Studies - were damaging the prospects of future generations.

Speaking on the opening day of his annual summer school for English and history teachers in Totnes, Devon, Prince Charles called for a return to "good manners, courtesy and consideration for others", rather than the increased emphasis on pupils' emotional self-awareness. "As part of the development of social skills might it not be a good idea to rediscover the concept of good manners?" he asked. "The old idea of doing to others as you would have them do to you is hardly deferential and might just be relevant."

The prince has previously used the event to attack ministers for their apparent obsession with preparing youngsters for the job market, and questioning the need to send large numbers to university. Yesterday he said that classic texts were in danger of being overlooked in the quest to make subjects relevant.

"Why ... has it been suggested in some quarters that people be asked to discuss the use of texting and instant messaging and whether such developments require a significant change to the teaching of English?" he wondered.
 
  

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