Tuesday, May 5, 2009

When words don't mean what they mean

"If you patronize a store it's a good thing, but if you patronize a person it's bad," I said to my fellow copy editor.

He's long wanted to know how "manipulate" got a bad rap. Clearly, one can manipulate an engine to get it to run. If nobody manipulated anything nothing would ever get done.

"Every Friday when they give me a paycheck it manipulates me to keep coming back to work," I said.

"I've given up trying to understand the language," he said. "I just keep trying to fix it."

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