Pedants' Corner

If most cabbage's and sprout's (sic) remain under snow for much longer the greengrocer's apostophe could be absent for a while too. So where should we look for similar joys? Well communications from SWT promise to be a rich field for those investigating distortions of our language. We've already had the affected word 'lookering', an example of adding an extra syllable to a word just to draw attention to yourself. That word is a phony archaism invented by devotees of conservation grazing maybe intended to give the practice its own specialised jargon. Now there's a new word on the block: 'Patrolees'. My first guess was that a 'patrolee' could be a recruit to some jingoistic or patriotic youth group, possibly wearing a uniform with nationalistic emblems. But no, it appears that the word 'patrolee' might be intended to mean "one who patrols". The online edition of the Complete Oxford Dictionary (the world authority) does not know of this word and I, for one, hope it doesn't find out about it. What is wrong with 'patroller'? That at least maintains the normal grammatical tradition that the suffix .. 'er' is used for one who actively does something, while the suffix .. 'ee' is used for one who has something done to them. Also, 'patroller' is an actual word having been used in the language for 282 years as the OED mentions. The blurring of these two suffixes is regrettable because they mean opposite things. A previous example - one I've seen also used by SWT and other local petty bureaucrats is 'attendee'. This unfortunately is becoming more common having originated in America and being used in computerised dictionaries and programmes like MS Word which rejects the better and more grammatical 'attender'. Attendant could also be used. But I suspect that in the case of 'patrolee' what is being aimed at is a kind of 'in' language something that's part jargon and part fey. It fits well with a communication strategy that rejects the frank and clear-cut.