I just noticed someone's word-of-the-day calendar. Today's word was "carpe diem" (two words, but even I'm not that picky. What riled me was that it was classed as a noun, defined as "an enjoyment of today without regard for tomorrow, and given in an example sentence beginning, "In the spirit of carpe diem..."
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.....
Carpe diem is an exhortation, "Seize the day!" It is a verb phrase, with seize as the verb and day as its object. In an English sentence, it can be used as a gerund, as can most English verbs. "The rising of the moon." "The running of the bulls." "The verbing of the nouns." Since it's still in its original Latin form (after all, we don't say "Carpe the diem") you can't really add an -ing suffix, because "In the spirit of carpe-ing diem" would sound even sillier. So OK, the gerund form, which is a noun, is identical to the original verb form. But it's not exactly a freestanding phrase, just an Example of how flexible English is. A fluent English-speaker, once having heard the phrase "Carpe diem properly defined (which this WASN"T) can work out the implications of its usage for himself for herself. I can't imagine being able to use the phrase properly if this was all you had.
The calendar had Miiriam-Webster's brand prominently displayed on it. Sad.
Posted by dichroic at January 19, 2006 11:42 AMHow about the entree served "with au jus"? Preposition as the object of a preposition? There's a word for people who try to sound educated when they don't know what they're talking about; they're saved from their ignorance by the fact that so many others are ignorant too.
Posted by: l-empress at January 20, 2006 07:37 AM
I'll never be a grammarian (if that is a word) but I certainly pick up some smarts from you two ladies.