Thank you Paul for such an excellent (albeit non-birding) post.
My 2 vol Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (third edition first published
1933; mine revised and issued in 1964) indicates that the first known usage
of Versus was in 1447, that it is from the Latin, and adds:
"Against; employed in Law to denote an action by one party against another.
Freq. abbrev. v. (also vs.)".
I do get just a bit grumpy when usages are pejoratively referred to as
"Americanisms".
All too many so-called 'Americanisms' are actually much earlier English
usages which have continued unchanged in the USA.
Yes, I have to admit that I too used to complain about so-called
'Americanisms' until I became interested in Genealogy and found that so very
many 'Americanisms' were of much longer standing than current (changed) UK
usages. ;- )
Cheers,
JAP
===============================
www.birding-aus.org
birding-aus.blogspot.com
To unsubscribe from this mailing list,
send the message:
unsubscribe
(in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
to:
===============================
|
