Have To Love Small Town Reporters
This is an excerpt from the Stony Plain Reporter/Grove Examiner.
----------
The following is a digest of activity reported by the Spruce Grove RCMP detachment during the last two weeks:
Six people were reported as suspicious in Spruce Grove. Very suspicious people stole a truck in the detachment area, and some were the cause of the seven other thefts from motor vehicles throughout the week.
----------
Only six suspicious people reported in the whole City of Spruce Grove? I'd say thats a pretty safe place to live!! :-)
4 comments:
Ha, ha! That is funny. I love looking for those little bloopers in our newspapers as well. When Kevin and I lived in Tumbler Ridge, they used to publish all the ambulance and fire hall calls complete with address and a digest of what took place there. We were published twice in the first 6 months we lived there. Once when Kevin's propane torch flamed out during a grass burning episode, and several weeks later when I had to travel to the medical centre via ambulance. What a great way to get to know your neighbors!
...not to mention that, presumably, the people's *actions* were such as to cause suspicion. It just seems weird to me to say that the six people were 'suspicious'. Suspicious of what or whom? They were the causes of suspicion, not the sufferers... Whatever, I'm just being a pedantic git!
pedantic
Definition:
*(1) narrowly, stodgily, and often ostentatiously learned
(2) unimaginative, pedestrian
(* Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.)
Example sentence: "Dr. Sanford is a pedantic old codger, in my opinion," said Pam, "whereas I find Dr. Wilson to be a lively and interesting lecturer."
Did you know?
In Shakespeare's day, a pedant was a male schoolteacher. The word's meaning was close to that of the Italian pedante, from which the English word was adapted. Someone who was pedantic was simply a tutor or teacher. But a good percentage of instructional pedants of the day must have been pompous and dull, because by 1600 both pedant and pedantic had gained extended senses referring to anyone who was obnoxiously and tediously devoted to his or her own academic acumen.
Noun: git
Usage: Brit
A person who is deemed to be despicable or contemptible
"the British call a contemptible person a 'git'"
- rotter, dirty dog, rat, skunk, stinker, stinkpot, bum [N. Amer], crumb, lowlife, scum bag, so-and-so
Type of: disagreeable person, unpleasant person
Yup. Are we having a bad day? ;-)
Well, add in the Australian tendency to use harsh words affectionately - like our habit of calling our best friends 'you old bastard' - and it transforms the contemptibility of the 'git' to a kind of self-deprecating affection for myself... ;)
And the 'pedantic' fits in both it's old and new senses - I'm a teacher, and in that particular instance I was being ostentatiously learned by correcting the grammar of the reporter rather than attending to the content of the article...
But yeah, words are fun to play with, and I certainly wasn't feeling particularly contemptible yesterday!
Post a Comment