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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Orion Pobursky wrote:
> Am I the only annoyed by the use of the word "ouster". The definition of this word make no sense when compared to other words with the "-er" suffix. To me the only usage of this word should be in referring to "someone in the process of ousting or has in the past ousted" and not to "the act of ousting". In other words, instead of saying "I call for the CEO's ouster" one should say "I call for the ousting of the CEO" since the former sounds to me like you calling for "the person who ousted/is ousting the CEO".
Perhaps it's the word order that's causing you grief.
What if you said, "I call for the ouster of the CEO."
No, that's the same, isn't it? Eclectic English and its scrambled semantics!
:)
Regardless, the definition does seem to be accurate, used for either the act or
the person performing the act.
The odd spelling of the version used to indicate the act itself may have more to
do with the etymology of the root word (1) and the way English has a way of
adopting words from other languages as they are without forcing them to conform
to an existing set of rules. That, however, is one of the reasons I think it's
such an interesting language.
> Sorry for wasting your time, but this is really starting to annoy me and I had
> to vent somewhere.
I'm worried about your work environment if you're hearing "I call for the CEO's
ouster" often enough for it to bother you that much. :)
The word misuse that is beginning to drive me batty is 'impact'. That and the
endless bad habit of clever business speakers turning perfectly good nouns into
perfectly awful verbs. There just is no such word as 'diarize' but that doesn't
stop some people. If these smart business people were really so smart they'd
learn which section of the bookstore contains the dictionaries. LOL
Regards,
Allan B.
(1) http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=oust
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: A Small Rant About Word Usage
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| (...) I expect Orion was hearing it a LOT... up till about 2 November. Then I expect the calls stopped. But they'll start up again come 2007... (Orion is in the US Navy, his CEO is a fellow who formerly unsuccessfully ran a major league baseball (...) (20 years ago, 30-Nov-04, to lugnet.off-topic.fun)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | A Small Rant About Word Usage
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| Am I the only annoyed by the use of the word "ouster". The definition of this word make no sense when compared to other words with the "-er" suffix. To me the only usage of this word should be in referring to "someone in the process of ousting or (...) (20 years ago, 29-Nov-04, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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