[Sca-cooks] Word usage was Re: remove vs course

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Jun 6, 2006, at 9:24 PM, Terry Decker wrote:

> Rather than just "probably unverifiable," "probably apocryphal"  
> denotes a
> likely but undetermined fraud or lack of authenticity.  If not used
> correctly in context, it can be very misleading.  Which is what I  
> think
> bothers Adamantius, the improper usage.
>
> Bear

It may be the mysterious Catholic thing at work, but it should be  
pretty easy to determine if something is, or is not, in the  
Apocrypha. But yes, that's a bit silly. In the larger sense, if we  
know of something that is or is not verified, we say it is  
apocryphal, like, say, all those funny anecdotes that are all told of  
Winston Churchill, Mark Twain, and George Bernard Shaw  
interchangeably, and probably never actually occurred. We don't know  
if this actually happened. ("Madame, you are very ugly!" "Sir, you  
are very drunk!"...etc.)

When we say it's probably apocryphal, what most people seem to tend  
to mean is that it is perhaps untrue, or is of dubious authenticity,  
but from a diction point of view, what it actually does mean is more  
like, there's some question about the question of whether it's true.

Generally speaking,  it tends to be redundant in practical usage.

Adamantius