Nitpicking

I know I'm picking nits here.

(Do you know the origin of "picking nits?" If not, you'll find it interesting. Look it up.)

One of the local reporters on a TV newscast the other night said, "The mayor's problem centers around funding."

That's my nit number one. Things don't "center around." The center is a point. It doesn't move around. A problem might center on, or it might revolve around, but it just can't center around. The laws of physics are immutable.

So if the hapless reporter wanted to preserve the cliché, which is tired from overuse and should be put to bed, she should have said, "The mayor's problem revolves around money."

Or better still, "The mayor's problem is money."

I read a quote in the paper the other day that provided nit number two for me to pick. It's about the word "comprise." It's a simple word meaning to include or consist of. But so many people get it wrong. RIGHT: "The team comprises nine players."

I've almost given up on nit number three. It's about "begging the question."

To beg the question is to commit the error of using circular reasoning. It all goes back to Aristotelian Logic and petitio principii. Unless you're really good at arguing and you really understand the logic of arguments, it's probably best to leave this one alone. Many people have come to think that "to beg the question" means the same thing as "to raise the question." It doesn't.

My advice, for what it's worth, is just don't use it. If you do use it, some people will think you're wrong, whatever you say. Just say "raise the question." That's probably what you mean anyway.

I don't harbor a great urge to pick nits. When it comes to English, I lean in the direction of descriptivism more than prescriptivism. (For example, I believe my nit number three above is about to undergo a sea change.)

The language evolves. It is not frozen in an ice-cube.

Chaucer wrote his Canterbury Tales centuries ago in the English that existed then. "Whan that aprill with his shoures soote/The droghte of march hath perced to the roote/And bathed every veyne in swich licour ..."

How many of us can translate that into today's idiom? Common speech has changed dramatically since the 14th century, so much so that if we were transported back to Chaucer's England, we'd not understand much of what the locals said.

Is Chaucer's English where the language should have stopped evolving? Is Shakespeare's? Is Faulkner's or Hemmingway's?

I think not. English will, despite any nits I or others might pick, will continue to grow and change.