Comments on: You loose,

You loose,

tiaka — Tue, 21 Aug 2001 12:08:41 -0800

You loose, but it's not your fault. I wonder if a winter edition of monopoly will come out because of this.

By: yarf

yarf — Tue, 21 Aug 2001 12:19:15 -0800

I think you meant to say "you lose"... Hey, anybody who plays these games (or lotteries in general) loses.

By: donkeysuck

donkeysuck — Tue, 21 Aug 2001 12:29:04 -0800

you meant to say "you lose"... perhaps the grammar police are wrong on this one. i cannot verify, but the aug. 17 entry at cardhouse claims that loose is now acceptable for lose.

By: aramaic

aramaic — Tue, 21 Aug 2001 12:37:09 -0800

I only *wish* I was loose . . . oh wait, I've said too much.

By: o2b

o2b — Tue, 21 Aug 2001 12:39:21 -0800

perhaps the grammar police are wrong on this one... i hope this is a joke.

By: wantwit

wantwit — Tue, 21 Aug 2001 12:42:10 -0800

no joke. i was incarcerated for having a dangling modifier.

By: dhartung

dhartung — Tue, 21 Aug 2001 13:10:19 -0800

Acceptable, to whom? The "National Dictionary Council"? Never heard of 'em. Dictionaries, at least in the United States, are not run by any sort of national council; each has its own editorial board. In any case, the descriptivist dictionaries that would be the ones to include this would do so with an asterisk that it is a mistaken spelling (like phase for faze). See the American Heritage article on usage controversies (the AHD is the top of the descriptivist heap). I'm not a pedant or prescriptivist, in general. I'll allow things in casual speech recognizing that formal speech is another domain. Heck, I'll let ain't be a word. But I think that smart people should know when two close and overlapping words have different shades of meaning, and try to preserve that; and should know that there are certain common spelling cock-ups, and try to avoid them when possible. (For example, you may have been told by a prescriptivist teacher, as most are in grade school, that judgment is correct, when that's merely a longstanding erroneous spelling given eternal life by the King James Version of the Bible. The obviously correct, and logical, spelling is judgement.) Tiaka gets a pass, really, for all prior contributions. But jeez! Talk about a grating misusage. Y'know what I think is responsible? "D00d". Gotta be.

By: Mo Nickels

Mo Nickels — Tue, 21 Aug 2001 13:14:14 -0800

i cannot verify, but the aug. 17 entry at cardhouse claims that loose is now acceptable for lose. The Cardhouse line must be a joke. There is no such thing as the National Dictionary Council, as far as I can find. No such news story has appeared in the last 20 years in any publication indexed by Lexis-Nexis or Dow Jones. There is nothing in Google about it, except for the Cardhouse entry. There is nothing about it on Linguistlist.org. I did not see it in any of my daily customized news searches, five of which are designed to catch anything related to dictionaries, language, dialects, slang and translation.

By: willnot

willnot — Tue, 21 Aug 2001 13:19:52 -0800

So then "Phase" isn't correct? Jeesh, I'll never get all these rules write. Was it i before e accept after c? No, because I no "their" is spelt with the e before i, and I don't sea a c anywhere. *hmmm* I hate spelling. Why can't computors just take care of every thing.

By: tiaka

tiaka — Tue, 21 Aug 2001 13:49:09 -0800

I was actually thinking of saying 'You're a looser', because I got a chuckle from a line I've read on the onion - 'opening sprite bottle inadvertently makes man a looser', it didn't make the cut, and I was still concentrated on the word 'looser', and that's how that came about. Anyway, give me a break, English is not my language, I've only spoken it for several years. :)

By: machaus

machaus — Tue, 21 Aug 2001 13:53:37 -0800

The only misusage more grating than substituting loose for lose, is the bizarre but common "loosing." That one gets my hackles up more than using modifiers on the word "unique."

By: moss

moss — Tue, 21 Aug 2001 14:06:04 -0800

The American Heritage Dictionary (which, to my great joy, is one of the dictionaries used on dictionary.com) has a fascinating usage note on the use of modifiers on unique, and related notes on absolute, equal, perfect, and infinite. (No, I don't have anything useful to say about it, I'm just glad machaus prompted me to look it up.) (Stay on topic? What?)

By: CrayDrygu

CrayDrygu — Tue, 21 Aug 2001 15:16:40 -0800

Hey, anybody who plays these games (or lotteries in general) loses. Lottery: Pay a dollar, get (usually) nothing back. McDonald's Monopoly: Buy a meal for the same price as usual. Get game tickets that may or may not get you a prize. Even if you get no prize, you still have your food. So unless you're going out of your way to eat at McDonald's for the sake of the game, how does it even compare?

By: gleemax

gleemax — Tue, 21 Aug 2001 15:43:46 -0800

I like judgment. Judgement is longer, and it's not like judgment is going to be confused for some other word.

By: jjg

jjg — Tue, 21 Aug 2001 15:45:43 -0800

If you're relying on Cardhouse as a primary news source, linguistic issues are probably the least of your problems.

By: Laugh_track

Laugh_track — Tue, 21 Aug 2001 16:07:30 -0800

Is it against the rules to sell your McD Monopoly tickets on eBay, say, to someone else who had the other two? Would that even work? Because I always thought that the pieces were spread out geographically for some reason.

By: Optamystic

Optamystic — Tue, 21 Aug 2001 16:31:42 -0800

...``Those involved in this type of corruption will find out breaking the law is no game,'' Attorney General John Ashcroft said in a statement... Is anyone else bothered by the fact that we have an Attorney General who talks exactly like Batman, circa 1950?

By: yarf

yarf — Wed, 22 Aug 2001 06:54:05 -0800

Even if you meant to say "You're a looser," you would still spell it wrong... "You're a loser." I feel like I'm at slashdot! As for playing the McD games, lots of people eat a lot more McD when these games are running to get the game pieces. Especially, believe it or not, the elderly. So, yes, it sucks as bad as the lottery, because your chance of winning anything significant is significantly small (like the Powerball mess). But you're right... lotteries are a hidden tax on the poor (you don't see many rich people playing the lottery). McD games are just dumb.

By: turaho

turaho — Wed, 22 Aug 2001 07:40:20 -0800

Because I always thought that the pieces were spread out geographically for some reason. If that were the case (say, Boardwalks are common and Park Places are rare on the west coast and vice versa on the east coast), then McDonald's would have no way of limiting how many prizes they give away. All it would take is one road trip and a lot of visits to McDonald's along the way to collect winning sets. No, each set has rare pieces which should have been randomly distributed across the country. So feel free to sell your game pieces on eBay, and if some idiot wants to buy them, great. Personally, if I got a rare piece, I'd just keep buying french fries at McDonald's until I completed the set.