Originally posted by Dartmoor Dave But the English term "public school" is a very logical one. Back in Ye Olde Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Dayes, sons of the aristocracy would be educated either by private tutors at home in yonder castle, or in church schools if they were destined for the clergy. There was no such thing as public education.
Eventually schools were founded that would accept the sons (such were the times) of anyone who could pay the fees, and where there was no specific religious affiliation required. So, for the first time, there were now schools that were open to any member of the public. Literally, public schools.
State schools -- offering an education provided by the state and financed through taxation -- came much later. And now, of course, just to complicate things, we've got private schools that aren't public schools. You have to pay fees to send your progeny there, but they aren't part of the closed shop of historic public schools.
So, yeah, our American cousins can call their state shools public schools if they want to. But, since the first English church schools were established in the 6th Century, I think we Limeys can claim that our terminology is the correct one.
(Sorry, Lord Lucan. As a member of the aristocracy you'll already know all that. I really just wanted to offer up some general background for the group mind.)
All very good points. I'm going to start using the phrase, "state schools", since that better describes their function (sit still, stay in your seat, no talking, raise your hand and wait for permission if you need to pee, don't be "tardy", keep your hands to yourself, stay in line, and above all, don't question authority).
---------- Post added 2021-12-22 at 03:07 AM ----------
Oh, well, you'd probably enjoy a sightseeing trip to Alexandria, Va., settled more than a hundred years before the revolutionary rebellion. They have not only King Street, but Queen St., Prince St., Henry St., and Duke St., as well (though I have no idea what duke they had in mind, and the reference to Henry may be gratuitous, since Alexandria dates from 1654, while the last Henry R. died in 1547).
---------- Post added 2021-12-22 at 03:11 AM ----------
Originally posted by Dartmoor Dave The one that makes my teeth grind is when someone says, "It's the exception that proves the rule." As if the fact that they have found an example of why a particular rule is wrong, somehow proves it right.
Aargh!
The term "to prove" originally meant "to test". It didn't mean that a particular rule had been shown to be true -- it just meant that it had been tested in some way. So when we say "It's the exception that proves the rule", what we actually mean is: "It's the exception that TESTS the rule". You test a rule by looking for an exception to it, and if you can find such an exception then you've shown the rule to be wrong.
But nowadays we live in a post-Enlightenment, post-reason world. So, for most of the population, it seems that the idea of applying tests based on evidence and logic to ideas before we choose to believe in them no longer applies.
...
Similar situation: "to try", now adapted by vulgar usage to mean, "to attempt" rather than "to test".
---------- Post added 2021-12-22 at 03:14 AM ----------
Originally posted by BigMackCam Whether it makes sense or not, common use of the term "100% crop" is to describe a cropped 1:1 photo-pixel to display-pixel reproduction. There are plenty of words, terms, phrases in common use - both within and outside of our photography domain - that diverge from prevailing, accepted rules and meanings of language - but we learn to understand them, even if we don't like them or choose to use them ourselves. The fact that they've become established indicates that enough folks do understand them and choose to use them. Such use results in our language evolving (perhaps to our frustration, but there it is). "100% crop" can be seen as an abbreviation of "full-size reproduction, cropped"... perhaps a lazy one, but it's not so difficult to understand or accept, IMHO.
No question about all that, and you're right, of course, but when I started doing photography, we called that process, "enlargement"; "cropped" was used after the print was made to mean "diminution" and was done with a large wooden table with a scythe-like hinged blade on one side.
I resist the popular pressure to adopt misuse of language that I see as unnecessarily confusing, and which I see as the result of an inability to make distinctions between denotative and connotative usage and the mistaken use of terms applied creatively because of the desire to communicate by analogy. The television news broadcasters started out with well educated people describing events; now they adopt the most vulgar dialect and usage as though it were proper and communicative; they compress everything into two tenses making it impossible to determine which of a series of events preceded others, and try to cram every possible situation into something that can be described in the active mood. Nothing is described in terms either subjunctive or passive, leading to some strange constructions. There's a sort of pattern I've noticed, in which a sort of reflexive implied passive mood is used, where a transitive verb is used with no direct object to refer to something that a person or thing does to itself. Things like, "Installs easy with only a single click.", which always makes me react, thinking, "Installs WHAT easily????". They do that to avoid having to say, "It is easily installed...". There's another process my wife describes as "verbalizing nouns", but that's another diatribe.