Paste Into

[richmond62]

Justify this Craig

I don't think anyone needs to justify 'this Craig', he has already done that years ago.

[stam]

Not for a second doubting Craig has “justified” whatever you think he has, but the statement that “worser” is correct UK English is wrong and doubling down on it has to be pointed out

[richmond62]

Frankly this thread is even worserer than it was yesterday.

HOWEVER, the question is, surely whether we should say, 'worser and worserer' or 'worsely and worselier'?

Oh, and by ther-way, "The weather is getting worser" is 100% OK.
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[stam]

Oh, and by ther-way, "The weather is getting worser" is 100% OK.
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Oddlier.jpg

Fully acknowledging I’m making this discussion ridiculouser (!), the point is that the Oxford dictionary does not recognise “worser” as a word. So, no, “the weather is getting worser” is not correct UK English. “The weather is getting worse” is……..

[richmond62]

The first question I should like you to repone to is just what, exactly, 'UK English' means: especially as I have never acknowledged the legitimacy of anywhere called the 'UK'?

My Grandfather used the Collins Dictionary, which has been described as 'English, Scottish usage', so that will do for me: and, in fact, from time to time I jam my Collins 21st Century tightly under my oxter just to remind me where my loyalty lies.

Washington Irving [an American writer who spent a good portion of his adult like in the English Lake district] used the form "builded', and I have to be careful when teaching children who have just clomb out of the miasma of some very bad English teaching indeed not to get all mixt up with my irregular verbs. From time to time I do get a bit disjaskit with the way EFL textbooks get extremely arch anent what constitutes 'standard' Inglis.

I ken you full well if you yaise the vocable 'worser'; far, far worser than that would be a failure to communicate, nicht?

And, Yes, before you ask, H.L. Mencken's 'The American Language' is one of my very favourite books.

[dunbarx]

Glad to see such repartee.

Not so glad that this has caused such nonsense. Anyway, "worser" is "in the dictionary", both Collins and Webster, and, like "funner", is just a word; one can use it or not. It is not a grammar issue, it is a common usage issue, and "common usage" is a matter of style only.

Craig

[jacque]

When speaking only to my husband I frequently say, "this is way more better." and until he got used to it he laughed. I agree with the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland who said when he uses a word it means what he says it means.

I took Craig's comment the same way, dictionaries be damned.

[richmond62]

That was NOT the caterpillar; that was Humpty Dumpty.

[dunbarx]

I always thought that it was Humpty who told Alice that, "if you do not know where you are going, it does not matter which road you take"

It was the Cheshire cat.

Craig

[jacque]

That was NOT the caterpillar; that was Humpty Dumpty.

Ah yes, quite right.