Ok, I’m a pedant
This post is really rather silly in a way because the topic is one which most people cannot imagine themselves getting worked up about.
Yet Adam is annoyed enough to write a blog post.
This morning Adam watched Agenda, not supplanted by the Olympics this week.
One of the two guest panellists was Brent Edwards from Radio New Zealand National. When responding to a question from host Rawdon Christie concerning the Pacific Islands Forum meeting decision, Mr Edwards commented that the decision was ‘quite unanimous’ .
Adam is upset with this phrasing, because either the decision was unanimous or it was not. Adam does not understand how the word ‘unanimous’ can be qualified with the addition of ‘quite’ which can be construed as meaning that the decision was not necessarily unanimous. In fact Adam is sure that when he went to school his English teachers would not have permitted such a misuse of the language.
Adam accepts that one definition of ‘quite’ is wholly or completely, but would suggest that this construction cannot be used here, as the definition of ‘unanimous’ is of one mind; in complete agreement; agreed rendering the use of quite as redundant as well as poor use of language.
What would Adam know? After all, Adam is only a blogger. He is not a professional journalist.
Adam took comfort in the fact that at least nobody on the programme talked about ‘atherletes’.
Yes I am a pedant. Yes I make many mistakes in my use of language as well.
Never mind, there are worse things that one could be. I’d suggest that we set up a pedants’ club, but we’d probably never get past arguing whether the name should include an apostrophe.