Comments on: The Inigo Montoya word of the week: 'Incredible' http://www.ojr.org/the-inigo-montoya-word-of-the-week-incredible/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-inigo-montoya-word-of-the-week-incredible Focusing on the future of digital journalism Mon, 15 Apr 2013 13:43:27 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Robert Niles http://www.ojr.org/the-inigo-montoya-word-of-the-week-incredible/#comment-2440 Robert Niles Sun, 17 Oct 2010 22:02:13 +0000 http://www.ojr.org/?p=1896#comment-2440 And to Paddu: Strong point, but I hope that my post might illustrate how that campaign might backfire among those folks in the rest of the English-speaking world who remember all the meanings of “incredible.”

]]> By: Robert Niles http://www.ojr.org/the-inigo-montoya-word-of-the-week-incredible/#comment-2439 Robert Niles Sun, 17 Oct 2010 22:00:40 +0000 http://www.ojr.org/?p=1896#comment-2439 If individual words are so flexible that they can change to mean anything, then what’s the point of thinking before writing? Why not just hook up a random generator to a dictionary database and let it do the writing for you? (Or give the assignment to an infinite number of monkeys?)

‘Incredible’ brings a flavor to the table that other superlatives lack. Why ignore that? Why lose that flavor through a generation of writers ignoring it? It’s not as if the English language is so lacking in superlatives that we need to hack this word into something else.

(And no matter what anyone else says, I will continue to believe that “Incredible” is a bad name for a cell phone.)

]]> By: Paddu G http://www.ojr.org/the-inigo-montoya-word-of-the-week-incredible/#comment-2438 Paddu G Sun, 17 Oct 2010 18:23:44 +0000 http://www.ojr.org/?p=1896#comment-2438 Robert, the word “Incredible” is widely used to mean positive, probably in other parts of the world. I am from India and India ran / still running a worldwide, hugely popular campaign named “Incredible India”. The article you have referenced in the post is derived from the same. I am not sure if the word is used differently in US and UK systems.

]]> By: 116.123.135.119 http://www.ojr.org/the-inigo-montoya-word-of-the-week-incredible/#comment-2437 116.123.135.119 Sun, 17 Oct 2010 03:34:01 +0000 http://www.ojr.org/?p=1896#comment-2437 You know, this kind of pedantry is annoying enough when it’s the normal boring attack on colloquial use of language, but here, you’ve ignored a valid definition in order to make your ridiculous point! Incredible, with the meaning “extraordinary”, fits every one of the examples you pulled out.

The next time you feel like sneering at your lessers, try to remember that the dictionary has more than one definition.

]]> By: 163.181.251.9 http://www.ojr.org/the-inigo-montoya-word-of-the-week-incredible/#comment-2436 163.181.251.9 Fri, 15 Oct 2010 12:24:35 +0000 http://www.ojr.org/?p=1896#comment-2436 It is incredible to me that you fail to understand the incredibly flexible nature of words. As demonstrated in the previous sentence, incredible means both unbelievable and fantastic. I know right, incredible!

Perhaps the Inigo Montoya word of the week should “grammarian”, as I believe you meant “Lexicographer”.

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