Backwash with a week to go
Well, it’s crunch time at the summer camp. As GW put it, it feels like the whole institute is winding down…if you’re an instructor. If you’re a student, it’s time to get working, or reveal to your peers the fact that you’re a studious person and that you have everything under control. With that in mind, some randomness.
First: try to find an edited dictionary with a definition for the the everyday meaning of backwash. Maybe you’ll try harder than I did, and succeed. But, I do find this definition hilarious: a condition, usually undesirable, that continues long after the event which caused it. Yes, that is exactly what backwash is. I mention this because, on Stanford the other day, I passed a group of 60-something men and women, and one of the women said something like, “Can you believe her? She actually spit into the drink to keep me from having more! I look in and there’s backwash!” The reply came, “What? No, lies are being spread here!” It just sounded strange to hear “backwash” from someone with all white hair.
Second: as one of my (upper) classmates has said, “scratch a descriptivist, find a prescriptivist.” And it’s certainly true, especially if you do morphology, syntax, or semantics, that to notice the “cool” stuff, it really does help to have a strong idea about what is “right.” Just the other day, one of my (linguist) friends said (about some beverage or something) that’s my favorite drink I’ve ever had. Now, favorite is end-of-scale, I think, so it is similar in a broad way to superlatives, and so should be able to appear with ever. But, “intuitively” it shouldn’t. Or anyway, there’s something makes that use interesting to examine.
Finally: recently I met up with The Tensor and Polyglot Conspiracy for lunch – very cool. In fact, several secretive blogger meetings (including also the proprietress of Anggarrgoon have been held in wide-open public areas. The results will either soon or never be made public.
Comments(4)
“My favorite drink I’ve ever had” seems to me to be either hedging or extremely positive – I think it would depend on the intonation.
“that’s my favorite drink I’ve ever had” cuts the ear because intuitively one should only be talking about favorites among things that one has in fact had, so the “… I’ve ever had” is superfluous. It might be asked why “favorite drink I’ve ever had” sounds bad while “best drink I’ve ever had” sounds OK. I think it’s because favorite sounds more subjective than best, so we might reasonably speak of the best as including things we haven’t ourselves experienced whereas we wouldn’t generally do this with our favorite.
“That’s my [***] drink I’ve ever had” never sounds right because of the repeated self reference. “That’s the favorite drink I’ve ever had” parallels “that’s the best drink…”, still sounds odd but at least it isn’t redundant.
TR: Hmm, how exactly would the hedging work? I believe you but I just can’t imagine it atm.
Erik: Oh yeah, duh! I should have realized that. Favorite is indeed more subjective than best, because it strongly implies that the person who has the favorite X has experienced X in some non-trivial way. So for beverages, that non-trivial way is, of course, drinking them. One could have a favorite drink for making, but then you’d say my favorite drink to make. (hmm…though you’d never say that’s my drink to make, unless you’re claiming territory on the drink-making…must think about this). That’s in opposition to best, which just requires some basis for evaluation, not necessarily an “experience.”
Dad: I agree, that’s the favorite drink I’ve ever had sounds pretty bad. I think the most common time you get favorite without a possessive is in phrases like that horse is a/the favorite to win, or something like that.
So, then, we all seem to agree that the redundancy makes it sound horrible. But what about that’s my favorite drink ever! Since the appearance with ever is what made my ears prick up in the first place. (that is, you can’t say that’s my red car ever, because ever requires an adjective that picks out the end of a scale, like best, or, apparently, favorite.)