The musical combo Pink Floyd in the song “The Wall” proclaimed: “We don’t need no education…” No?! You couldda fooled me! And this coming from an English rock group no less. Who wouldda thunk?!
In a recent The Railroad Enthusiast post I wrote: “In my life I have bore witness to some harrowing near-disasters.” Well, it’s true. I have.
So, the question becomes: Is it possible to replace the “near-disasters” term with the term “near-misses” and have the meaning of the sentence not be changed in any appreciable way? I think not.
A “near-disaster” suggests a close call, a “miss,” in other words. A disaster averted. If the term “near-disaster” were to be substituted with “near-miss,” would that not be the same as saying “certain disaster”? In other words disaster is unavoidable? That there is just no getting around this?
Just yesterday I heard “mischievous” mispronounced “mis-cheevey-us” on the tv show Man With A Plan. Meanwhile, people don’t seem to have a problem pronouncing “unclear” as anything other than “unclear”. So, how is that “nuclear” sometimes comes out as “nuke-u-ler”? Now I know there is no mispronouncing “subsidiary” as “subsidairy”. Not.
All this talk may be hard for some people to accept. Someone once even admonished: “Less correcting, more connecting”. Wise words indeed. But, at the same time, there has to be room for correcting too. This reminds me of the time I saw a segment on CBS’ Sunday Morning regarding two males that referred to themselves as the “Typo Guys.” They purposely drove around the country looking for mistakes on signs and what-not. They seemed to get their point across in a non-insulting way. I believe people appreciated the “Typo Guys’” due diligence. There were no hard feelings.
Today, when I hear someone say: “I take matters like these serious,” I just have to ask: “Seriously?”
