Wednesday 29 February 2012
English as a Foreign Language
I have rarely been able to resist headlines containing the phrase 'Slain Socialite', and so it was that I found myself on the Fox News site. I had picked up from somewhere the idea that Fox News does not always uphold the highest of journalistic standards, but, really, this appears to have been written by someone who has a very odd understanding of English:
Leaving aside what I would regard as the misuse of 'befuddled' and 'placate', what the hell does 'glommed' mean?
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"Glommed onto" means more or less "attached oneself to" in colloquial American. Think of a remora on a shark, or maybe just a burr on a sock.
ReplyDeleteI cherish the memory of a trial many years ago here, in which both The Washington Post and The Washington Star had such terrible coverage that I bought both papers every day. The Post's author described one of the attorneys in the case as "by turns puglike and lucubrating", which I think must have been meant to be "pugnacious and lugubrious".
That made me laugh out loud - and there's nothing better than that.
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