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Friday, 21 March 2008 05:44 pm
(no subject)
Comcast News has mildly annoyed me once more. I won't blame them for the more head-shaking but accurate content in this article, but there is the wording of this sentence:
"Carbon Footprint Stomping" is a phrase used to describe flaunting environmentally "green" activities by doing things like driving gas-guzzling Hummers and flying private jets, which in these energy-conscious times might be considered the height of political incorrectness.
In times past, I haven't really minded the use of "flaunting" as a synonym for "flouting." Bill Cosby cited such usage in The New York Times as a sign of waning education, but seeing as dictionaries are including that definition (after a moderately long list of unrelated ones), I usually accept it.
Yet somehow, in this case, my mind jumped to the older definition first -- that of showing off. Any time that I have to re-adjust my semantic understanding late in a sentence and the author didn't intend it is pretty bothersome.
"Carbon Footprint Stomping" is a phrase used to describe flaunting environmentally "green" activities by doing things like driving gas-guzzling Hummers and flying private jets, which in these energy-conscious times might be considered the height of political incorrectness.
In times past, I haven't really minded the use of "flaunting" as a synonym for "flouting." Bill Cosby cited such usage in The New York Times as a sign of waning education, but seeing as dictionaries are including that definition (after a moderately long list of unrelated ones), I usually accept it.
Yet somehow, in this case, my mind jumped to the older definition first -- that of showing off. Any time that I have to re-adjust my semantic understanding late in a sentence and the author didn't intend it is pretty bothersome.