The other day I voluntarily edited a friend's work and informed him that he used the abbreviation e.g. when he meant to write i.e. I explained to him, "I.e. is Latin for id est which means 'that is to say', and e.g. is Latin for err go which means 'for example'..." I then patted him on the head and went back to smoking my pipe.
Answers.com, insolent site that it is, said I was not only mistaken about the Latin, but about so many parts of the definition that it is amazing I wound up at the correct conclusion.
1.Id est means "that is". Years ago I must have added, "...to say" because it has a nice ring to it. In related news, the song Kiss From a Rose sounds better if Seal says, "To me you're like a word the dictionary can't define," and not, "To me you're like a growing addiction that I can't deny." Id est I give you. Wrong lyrics are a matter of taste.
2.E.g. stands for exempli gratia, which translates into for the sake of example.
3.Ergo is not two words.
4.Ergo means consequently or therefore.
5.Ergo is not spelled Err Go. To err (go) is human.
While I'm coming clean, I seem to enjoy making fun of people who eat Grape Nuts, but the truth is I love Grape Nuts. I own a box. I like the way they taste with bananas. I eat them because it reminds me of how I used to want to be just like my mom. She let me add a spoonful of sugar to them so I could stand it. Then one day I didn't need sugar anymore. On that day, I became a woman.
The truth shall set you free--i.e., make you feel good--when you carry a heavy burden, e.g., guilt, shame, Grape Nuts.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
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6 comments:
This is a great post! Educational!! And amusing. Perhaps you should be a teacher instead of a comic : ) J/K. Besos!
How clever.
Thanks Sis! If I were a teacher, I'd be the kind who insists kids call me by my first name, and who uses slang that's about 2 years behind, but all the students secretly--nay, openly--think I'm lame.
Dear anonymous, I like the way you think. I was convinced you were my mother, but she denies ever reading my blog.
Claudia Cogan would say HD - how droll.
This is a great post! You should team up with Dziura and teach us all a thing or two.
Thank you CKC, I’m going to go to one of her spelling bees and make up for the time in fourth grade when I lost on the word, “radon”. (Doy! Its most stable isotope is Rn 222 with a half-life of 3.82 days. Atomic number 86; melting point −71°C; and boiling point −61.8°C) PS: I'm bringing 'Doy' back.
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