I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to meme. 'Mimeme' comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like 'gene'. We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. In Dawkins' conception of the term, it is "a unit of cultural transmission"-the cultural equivalent of a gene: Meme isn't new: it dates to evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins' 1976 book The Selfish Gene, where it functioned with a meaning other than its current most common one. According to Google Ngram Viewer, the phrase is very rare in books, but the rate of occurrence doubles starting around 1993.You're right, this needs more cats. (What's the difference between one small unspecific amount of time, and some small unspecific number of small unspecific amounts of time? Nothing!) Frankly, I blame Microsoft for bringing this foolishness into the language, as it has long been a phrase used during Microsoft software installation. There is no difference between "a moment" and "a few moments". You can use them more or less interchangeably, but "minutes" is more precise, and "moments" are generally less than "minutes".įinally, a pet peeve of mine: "A few moments." This phrase is proof that we native English speakers aren't very bright. A few minutes from now, he will go shopping for an unspecified duration. sometime in the future, he will spend a few minutes shopping. Equivalently: He went shopping for a few minutes. We had a good conversation during lunch and then discussed what to next. The above means that after something, we waited (or did whatever we were doing) for a few minutes, and then went shopping for an unspecified amount of time (perhaps hours and hours.) For example, The above means that there are some people who understand the situation. It's a warning.Ī few people on our team understand the situation. The above means that not very many people understand the situation. For example:įew people on our team understand the situation. The former is limiting: it implies "less than you'd expect". "Few" means "not very many", where as "a few" means "some". But few moments are not fraught with anxiety about going over limit on my credit cards." "We were in the store for an hour, but because the children were misbehaving so badly, we spent few moments actually shopping." ("Moments" is good here because it emphasizes that the "amount of time spent" was broken up into brief segments.)įirst, it's a common mistake by non-native English speakers to not understand the difference between "few" and "a few". Let me have a few of them.") I don't think it has anything to do with time, i.e., "minutes/moments." "Of all the cities in the US, few have not experienced increased unemployment." "I think going to the Galleria is a great adventure. ( The superintendent will now say a few words.) My ear accepts "He spent few moments of his day shopping," and to a lesser degree, "We spent few minutes shopping." Another way to make that same test would be to ask yourself if you can follow "few" by " of them." ( Edit. According to my ear, you can skip the article when your meaning is "few rather than many." ( He is a man of few words.) When you mean "a small number of," then you need the article.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |