Without Fail.

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Without Fail.

Tämä viestiketju on "uinuva" —viimeisin viesti on vanhempi kuin 90 päivää. Ryhmä "virkoaa", kun lähetät vastauksen.

1Novak
kesäkuu 25, 2014, 5:38 pm

Just finished Lee Child's excellent Without Fail. An expression we all use but hardly good grammar, is it?

2Novak
Muokkaaja: kesäkuu 25, 2014, 5:41 pm

Just finished Lee Child's excellent Without Fail. An expression we all use but hardly good grammar, is it?

3Novak
kesäkuu 25, 2014, 5:40 pm

NB: The author most certainly did NOT delete the first message. That was LT.

4lilithcat
kesäkuu 25, 2014, 6:21 pm

It was good grammar at the time the phrase originated. According to the OED, "fail" as a noun is an obsolete synonym for failure, and the usage survives only in the expression "without fail".

5jjwilson61
kesäkuu 25, 2014, 7:00 pm

How about Epic Fail?

6thorold
kesäkuu 26, 2014, 5:03 am

>5 jjwilson61:
The OED hasn't quite caught up with YouTube yet, but in their "Draft additions 1993" they do list fail (n) as the opposite of "pass" in an exam.

7Muscogulus
kesäkuu 26, 2014, 11:10 am

> 3 Something weird was going on yesterday. I had a post on another thread appear to be deleted, but then it wasnt.

8lilithcat
kesäkuu 26, 2014, 11:24 am

> 3, 7

Not just yesterday. That message occurs when the system sees a blank post, which often happens when the servers are slow.

9darrow
kesäkuu 26, 2014, 11:28 am

On a similar theme, I am disturbed by the British road sign: "Road liable to flooding". Liable to flood, surely?
I would accept "prone to flooding".

10Novak
Muokkaaja: kesäkuu 26, 2014, 2:18 pm

>7 Muscogulus: I don't know if it's a bug.

I typed my message @ 1.. Hit "post message" and up comes "This message has been deleted by author."

OK.. .. typed it again 2 and had my grumble 3.

To add insult to injury, when I came bach to read lilithcat's post (Thank you, lilith') a few hours later.. .. .. it had changed. My message was back in duplicate. Grrrrr! :o)

11jjwilson61
kesäkuu 26, 2014, 2:31 pm

>10 Novak: It was never really gone, just lost in the bowels of LT for a while.

12thorold
Muokkaaja: kesäkuu 27, 2014, 5:52 am

>9 darrow:
"Liable to flood" is tricky: pedants might argue that it's the river that floods, the road that is flooded. If you treat "flooding" as a noun (which is just about permissible), "liable to flooding" seems to be acceptable usage.

I don't like "prone to flooding" - for one thing, "prone" has all sorts of other, possibly confusing, meanings, and for another, when you use "prone to" to mean "liable to", it almost always seems to be with reference to people, rather than inanimate objects.

I'm sure they could have found a more succinct way to express it. "Flood risk ahead" might be rather more effective, for instance. In countries other than the UK, they might be liable to spend the money on raising the road level and/or putting in better drains rather than on putting up a signpost...

13CDVicarage
kesäkuu 27, 2014, 5:58 am

>12 thorold: A section of my route to work used to flood regularly and the Highways Authority worked on the drainage again and again - the resulting traffic light controlled hold-ups being far more annoying than the large puddle that we otherwise had to drive through - but they finally gave up and put up a new road sign 'Road liable to flooding' and there's been no flooding since, even during the last very wet winter.

14thorold
kesäkuu 27, 2014, 6:03 am

>13 CDVicarage:
Maybe I was underestimating the resourcefulnessof British highway engineers!