The English language is making me cranky today
Posted on June 16, 2005
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Earlier today while chatting with Adina I almost inadvertently wrote “yesternight” to mean “last night”. Which got me thinking: if “yesterday” is a word, is “yesternight”? And if “last night” is valid, is “last day”?
And then, while we chatted about carpentry, I used the word “carpent” to mean the thing that a carpenter does, yet this does not seem to be a word. A racer races, a shoemaker makes shoes, a washer washes… why does a carpenter not carpent?
And then we learned that “smart ass” is not that, nor is it “smartass”, but rather “smart-ass”, which I do not like the look of.
English, you confound me sometimes.
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Welcome to my world. When I first learned english I was majorly confused. I came from a slavic background where they way you say it, you spell it and vice versa. Then I got introduced to silent letters and word that did not follow any rules like you mentioned.
what always gets me is the i before e rule , whats up with that.
Clownmurder? Clown-murder? It’s all so fucking crazy.
I should think that one would be obvious: ‘clown murder’, ‘clown-murdering’, ‘clown-murderer’.
When in doubt follow the crack-whore rule: hyphenate the nouns (which is, I suppose, why smart-ass is hyphenated damnit).