Month: November 2008

“… applications that denigrate network capacity …”

Verbs

I saw this on a website.

Problem:
The verb “denigrate” is inappropriate here.

Explanation:
The complete paragraph, which appeared on a page about broadband Internet service from Cricket Wireless, was “Throughput may be limited if use exceeds 5GB per month. Internet browsing does not include: hosted computer applications, continuous web camera or broadcast, automatic data feeds, machine-to-machine connections, peer to peer (P2P) connections or other applications that denigrate network capacity or functionality.”.

In other words, the writer was referring to software applications that could adversely affect the capacity or functionality of the Cricket Wireless broadband Internet network.

The verb “denigrate” means to derogatorily criticize, to defame, or to blacken. The N-I-G-R part of this verb can be traced to the Latin verb “nigrare”, which means to make black.

So “denigrate” applies to people, not to telecommunications or computer networks.

“Degrade” would be an appropriate verb to describe the act of adversely affecting network capacity or functionality.

For fun, I searched Google for “denigrate network” (with the quotation marks, to avoid variations) and got about 194 matches.

What I found the most interesting about those search results was that Verizon Wireless also had a page that included “denigrate network capacity or functionality” in a discussion about its broadband Internet service.

That leads to one of three conclusions:

  1. Cricket copied Verizon.
  2. Verizon copied Cricket.
  3. Cricket and Verizon copied a third party when writing terms and conditions for wireless broadband Internet service.

No matter which of these three statements is true, their misuse of “denigrate” left a digital trail.

Solution:
“… applications that degrade network capacity …”

“Accredidation”

Devolution toward Simpler, Mispronunciations, Misspellings, Nouns

I heard this during a radio broadcast this morning.

Problem:
This is a mispronunciation.

Explanation:
The radio broadcast was about The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB).

The news reporter said that UTMB would not lose its “accredidation” in spite of yesterday’s announcement that 3,800 employees there would be laid off.

The noun is correctly spelled A-C-C-R-E-D-I-T-A-T-I-O-N because it comes from the verb “accredit”, which ends with a “t”.

Therefore, the final two syllables of the noun “accreditation” should be pronounced as “tation” (starting with a “t” as in “tango”) instead of as “dation” (starting with a “d” as in “delta”).

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following (without the quotation marks) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

  • “accreditation” — 38,100,000 matches
  • “accredidation” — 85,500 matches

This tells me that Web authors have used the correct spelling versus the incorrect spelling by a ratio of 446-to-1, which is superb.

However, this ratio does not tell the complete story because it covers spellings, not pronunciations.

I believe that the mispronunciation of “accreditation” is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis. It is simpler to say “dation” than it is to say “tation”.

Solution:
“Accreditation”

“Free Gift”

Adjectives, Common English Blunders, Nouns, Redundancies

I see and hear this phrase a lot.

Problem:
The adjective creates a redundancy.

Explanation:
The noun “gift” in this phrase means a thing or experience voluntarily given without any kind of reciprocal payment required or expected.

So the adjective “free” creates a redundancy when combined with the noun “gift”.

For fun, I searched Google for “free gift” (with the quotation marks, to avoid variations) and got about 9,110,000 matches.

Not all of these matches were what I was seeking. For example, Google returned “Free Gift-Giving Labels”, but this does not agree with the sense of the phrase “Free Gift”.

However, I am sure that many millions of the returned matches did agree with the sense of the phrase, which obviously makes this phrase a common English blunder.

Solution:
“Gift”