this blog is girtby.net

Posted
20 December 2004

Categories
Verisimilitude Or Something

Tags

1 Comments

Catachresis of the Year

Bush BulgeTime Magazine are hereby nominated for the catachresis of the year 2004:

For sticking to his guns (literally and figuratively) [...] , George W. Bush is TIME's 2004 Person of the Year

Literally sticking to his guns, eh. I wonder where he stuck them? Maybe between the shoulder blades, as seen during the second presidential debate (pictured)?

Or maybe Time were just paying homage to GWB’s mastication of the English language.

1 Comments

Posted by
Matt Rubinstein
2004-12-20 16:08:23 -0600
#

No, there was obviously glue on the guns. Or chewing gum, which he’d stuck there because he needed to walk somewhere and couldn’t do both at once.

I wouldn’t dignify that with catachresis, though—it’s just a solecism, a misuse of “literally”, which happens literally all the time quite often.