Vale Kathleen Tinkel

[terrie]

ann: Oh, having only ever seen real snow once, in Canada, I am in no position to write a critique of its use in descriptive prose!

ROFL!!!


Oh go ahead! You know you want to...'-}}




Terrie

[terrie]

steve: Perhaps they were thinking of "slathered" but their keyboard was a pain in the "s" ?

Perhaps that's it...it would make more sense...although, "slathered" brings to mind (my mind at least), a level of thickness that brine does not have but still..."slathered" is better than "lathered"...'-}}




>>but "more firmly packed"

"firmly"...that's the word I was looking for...thanks!




>>the real issue, "to prevent packed snow from turning into ice".

Perzackly!




Terrie

[woody649]

Originally Posted by terrie

Are we counting newspaper copy editors? If so, I have a lovely one...'-}}



In Wednesday's (Nov. 23, 2022) Washington Post A-section in an article discussing the clean-up efforts in Buffalo, New York (80" of snow in 48 hours):

"Before the snow covered the ground, layers of brine, a very high concentration of salty water, were lathered onto the roads to pervent hard layers of snow from becoming hardly packed."



I laughed when I read the above because, technically, "hardly" is (maybe?) correct in that the "ly" is indicating "more" (hard) but--at least here in the US--"hardly" generally means, "less" ("hardly anything left in the pantry"). I was trying to think of what would have been less fraught and came up with:


"...onto the roads to prevent hard layers of snow from becoming more deeply (stiffly? strongly?) packed"



And...let us not forget the odd use (to me) of "...lathered onto the roads..." which is also not quite right--horses can become lathered, faces can be lathered (as in shaving), but...I don't think roads can be lathered???



Soooo...what say all of you to this totally grammar nerd observation?



Terrie

Let's not overlook the part about "to pervent hard layers of snow from becoming hardly packed."

I suppose it would be hard for snow to become hard if it has been pervented.

[woody649]

Originally Posted by terrie

Perhaps that's it...it would make more sense...although, "slathered" brings to mind (my mind at least), a level of thickness that brine does not have but still..."slathered" is better than "lathered"...'-}}

Not really.

That brine is exactly what the word implies -- it gets dribbled out of nozzles on the back of a moving truck, as a liquid. While "lathering" implies suds (later), "slathering" likewise carries connotations of a substance with significant body to it. You can "slather" toast with butter, and you can "slather" a surface with grease, but I just can't envision "slathering" anything with what is essentially [very] salty water.

Furthermore, "slathering" suggests applying a somewhat uniform, thick coating of ... whatever. The brine applications aren't uniform. Right after it has been applied and had dried, when driving on a road that has been treated you see thin, parallel white lines running along the travel lanes.

[annc]

Originally Posted by terrie

LOL!!!


Ewww!!! '-}}




Terrie

He loved being a dentist. Did lots of post-grad work and published papers on all sorts of stuff in professional journals along with other dentists.

[annc]

Originally Posted by woody649

Let's not overlook the part about "to pervent hard layers of snow from becoming hardly packed."

I suppose it would be hard for snow to become hard if it has been pervented.

Can't they afford even a basic spelling checker to flag typos?

[woody649]

Originally Posted by annc

Can't they afford even a basic spelling checker to flag typos?

Spell check is built into pretty much every self-respecting word processing program. In Word, I believe it's on by default but can be turned off, after which the operator had to remember (or bother) to run a spell check manually. Even if it's turned on, the operator has to be awake enough to wonder why so many words on the screen have those squiggly little lines under them. Some words get auto-corrected if typed incorrectly, but far from all.

I shudder to think what the auto-correction would be for "pervent" ...

"... to pervert hard layers of snow from becoming hardly packed." ???

I'm not sure that's an improvement.

[terrie]

woody: "to pervent hard layers of snow from becoming hardly packed."

That is my typo...I've fixed it in my original post...



Terrie

[terrie]

ann: He loved being a dentist.

Well...one would hope so...'-}}


Terrie

[terrie]

ann: Can't they afford even a basic spelling checker to flag typos?

As I noted, that is my typo...I've fixed it in my original post...'-}}



Terrie