'Suspicioning'
I just heard a radio announcer say something along the lines of 'the authorities are suspicioning arson.' Linguistic conservative that I am, I immediately suspected a silly and unnecessary innovation: why say 'suspicioning' when you can use the good old word 'suspecting'? So I pulled my Compact Oxford English Dictionary off the shelf, got out the magnifying glass, and found 'suspicion' listed as a transitive verb used as such as early as 1637: "Suspicioning of himselfe, that if he should become negligent, he would loose [sic] his magnanimity." (Compact OED, p. 3180)
Posted by William F. Vallicella on
Wednesday May 14, 2008 at 12:42pm
Your find in the OED is interesting, but of course a conservative doesn't conserve that which is old but that which is good.
Regards, Bill T
You are right about conserving the good rather than the old. But conservatives are also opposed to change for the sake of change, which is why I was on the point of railing against a new and useless piece of innovation -- until I wrestled the OED off the shelf.
Bob,
Yes, the simple present is better than the present progressive.
"Person of interest" is a term that allows authorities to publicly identify a person in relationship to a crime without stating what the relationship is.
Bill T
x is a person of interest iff x is a suspect or x is a witness or x is both a suspect and a witness or x is both a suspect and a victim.
If this is what 'person of interest' means, then I approve of the term. It is useful to have a term broader than 'suspect.' Now two questions: do you have an authoritative source that explains this? Don't most people use 'person of interest and 'suspect' interchangeably?
Maybe people are prone to reflexive suspucioning...
I don't have an authoritative source. That's just what I have always believed the word meant. Can't tell you where I heard it defined.
2. Disallowing comments from a particular person, or deleting an offensive, off-topic, or otherwise substandard comment, has nothing to do with censorship. People who think otherwise confuse censorship with lack of sponsorship. I am under an obligation not to interfere with anyone's exercise of legitimate free speech rights. But I am not under any obligation to aid and abet anyone's exercise of free speech rights, legitimate or illegitimate.
3. The Comments area is not an open forum for anyone to say anything about any topic. As the name implies, it is primarily for commenting on the author(s)' posts. But to comment on them, one must have read them. And if I have spent three hours on a post, a reader will not understand it in thirty seconds. Secondarily, the Comments area is to facilitate civil discussion between and among commenters as long as the discussion remains on-topic.
4. Some undesirables: The skimmers, those who cannot read but only read-in. The sophists who, abusing argument, argue for the sake of argument. The ideologues, those who are out for power, not truth. The uncivil. The illogical. The politically correct. Worst of all, perhaps, are those who exemplify the anti-Socratic property: those who think they know what they don't know. If Socrates was famous for his learned ignorance, these types are marked by their ignorant unlearnededness.