Just wondering

Of course, being really pedantic, it should be "I am fatter than he" (because it should read "than he is" ) and so on.

When does a solecism become common usage? I think 'He gave it to Rosie and I ' is still generally regarded as an error, while (point I was making earlier) 'Me and Rosie went yesterday' is pretty general. Although incorrect.

My DGCs use 'huggles' for a cuddly hug and 'kisstletoe' for the Christmas greenery....I don't think we invented them, they are just fun words that seem to come about by themselves.

@Elegran - that isn't in the least pedantic!

Good post on the use of the me or I etc problem Elegran. a lot of people put the me word first these days though, perhaps less strict than our own school teachers many moons ago explains it.

Where does the "bie" come from in freebie. Being?

petra
If you dont like the way I post, or what I post, tough I suppose.
Else I suppose you could take it up with gransnet. The only other option is to stick it out.

From the same place as the 'n' in 'an', maybe?

ha!

I thought that perhaps 'freebie' could equally have been 'freeby', but when I tried 'freeby' in the Google dictionary, it turned out to be the name of a small village in Leicestershire. -by is a suffix in place names in areas occupied by Danish invaders, meaning 'town', like Whitby or Grimsby. 'Freebie' is one of our transatlantic borrowings, originally slang, but has made the transition into standard English.

I agree words and language are really very interesting. I do crosswords and learning words through this. Fascinating language is. I love it. Don't particularly like Americanisms though!

I'm just wondering whether you're a pair of grans or just one gran with two names, Royandsyl

I love working out the origin of words: as a small child, around 4, I asked Mum where words came from but she didn't know. I ended up picturing a group of men in brown suits sitting round a table naming things. I suppose I thought men in suits ran everything.

Later at grammar school I did French, then Latin a year later, then German - all the languages taught me so much about word origins, and German made my local Yorkshire dialect seem so very legitimate.

The Indo-European language tree is a good way of picturing it all. We are on the Germanic branch of course. I often wondered what became of the Celtic language: we don't seem to have much of it in today's language. Then I found out our simple grammar with few inflections comes from there.

Here in Australia we have loads of new words; I use them all the time. Chooks for chickens is a good one: I have 7 chooks in my back yard i.e. back garden, and love to sit out there on a sunny arvo (afternoon)watching the greenies (lorikeets) fly over, and the cockies (cockatoos) too. We have words like rabbit-o and fish-o i.e. vendors.

I'm pretty sure some new words will crop up for Australian cricketers, but they'll probably not be fit for these pages.