I’ve seen “let alone” used on Lemmy a good number of times now and, at least when I noticed it, it was always used incorrectly. It’s come to a point where I still feel like I’m being gaslit even after looking up examples, just because of the sheer amount of times I’ve seen it used outright wrong.
What I’m talking about is people switching up the first and last part. In “X, let alone Y” Y is supposed to be the more extreme case, the one that is less likely to happen, or could only happen if X also did first.
The correct usage: “That spaghetti must have been months old. I did not even open the box, let alone eat it.”
How I see it used constantly: “That spaghetti must have been months old. I did not eat it, let alone open the box.”
Other wrong usage: “Nobody checks out books anymore, let alone visits the library.”
Why does this bug me so much? I don’t know. One reason I came up with is that it’s boring. The “wrong” way the excitement always ramps down with the second sentence, so why even include it?
I am prepared to be shouted down for still somehow being incorrect about this. Do your worst. At least I’ll know I keep shifting between dimensions where “let alone” is always used differently or something.
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I wanted to highlight that this use of “let alone” is only for the negative construction where “let alone” means the same thing as “much less”.
In a more positive construction “let alone” means the same as “not to mention” while both not letting it alone and still mentioning it. The earliest reference in the OED is of this construction:
“I didn’t hide, nor wouldn’t from any man living, let alone any woman.”
Before this use, to “let alone” was to “leave alone” and dates back to the old English.
I’m not sure when the negative construction of “let alone” first emerged, but it’s no more than two hundred or so years old.
It’s not my pet peeve, but it does irk me. I’ll stand with you against the wronglings.
That is a fair grammatical pet peeve. I have a pet peeve for when people use words for the exact opposite of their meaning. Not just your classic “could care less”, or other things that mostly just come from people mishearing the correct phrase, but using entirely different words whose definition literally means the opposite of what they mean.
A couple examples:
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I had a Facebook friend talk about how, before he went on a trip overseas for a few months, like 30 people threw him a surprise going away party. He described this event as “humbling”. Yeah, that giant group of people coming out to celebrate you in particular and personally send you off on your trip must have really took you down a peg. I’m sure it really lowered your ego and made you realize you aren’t important.
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I CONSTANTLY hear in tv shows and movies stuff like “I’m really anxious to get going. I’ve been looking forward to this all week.” The word is “eager”. You are eager for something good that you have been anticipating. You are only anxious for some upcoming event that you are dreading or that you are trying to avoid, something causing you anxiety, thus the word. You are anxious for the upcoming test you arent prepared for and you are anxious to escape the haunted house without screaming like a little girl at a jump scare. You are not anxious to earn a payraise.
I mostly agree with everything you said, but words can have multiple meanings like anxious:
- Characterized by extreme uneasiness of mind or brooding fear about some contingency; WORRIED
- Characterized by, resulting from, or causing anxiety; WORRYING
- Ardently or earnestly wishing
Dictionaries only add those later definitions because dictionaries document the dumb ways people use words after all the correct ways.
So, yes, words have multiple meanings because people use them in all sorts of dumb ways and dictionaries capture that.
What are your thoughts of the word, “awful”?
It’s awful!
I like it an awful lot.
See the problem with that is that I believe the 3rd meaning there comes from the common misuse of the word. Otherwise the connotation behind the word loses all meaning. It would be indiscernible in what way you anticipating an event if the word means something you dread and something you eagerly wait using the exact same phrase. “I’m anxious for dad to get home”, for example, should have the connotation that they are expecting trouble when their dad gets home, while “I’m eager for dad to get home” tells you that something good will come with dad’s arrival. But that third definition means “anxious” gives both connotations, or rather neither. If anxious is both an antonym and a synonym to “eager”, it’s a linguistically meaningless word. Why bother saying it at all if you also have to explain it or give additional context to understand which polar opposite meaning you intended?
So to your first concern, the link address it:
The word has been used in the sense of “eager” for a considerable length of time, with evidence going back at least to the 17th century.
How long does a term have to be commonly missed before it is just a common use?
As for your second concern, language isn’t separate from context. The use comes first in context and then we derive definitions. 🌍👨🏾🚀🔫👩🏾🚀
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Thanks for this, we don’t want to loose sight of the correct usage.
loose sight
Please tell me that was intentional. It’s the internet, I can’t tell.
Don’t worry, it was intentional. It’s one of my pet peeves although not quite in the same category as the OPs one.
In “X, let alone Y” Y is supposed to be the more extreme case, the one that is less likely to happen, or could only happen if X also did first
Other wrong usage: “Nobody checks out books anymore, let alone visits the library.”
X = “Nobody checks out books anymore”: less extreme. People could go to be going to the library and choosing to read books there.
Y = “let alone visits the library”: more extreme. People don’t even go to the library, so they wouldn’t be able to check out books even if they wanted to.
Why is that usage not correct? According to you definition, it should be. We it the other way around, then it would be wrong (according to your definition).
Please explain.
You are getting confused because you are comparing negations. It’s “visiting the library” that is less extreme than “checking out a book”.
This is also more of an example of dependency rather than extremity. That is, “checking out a book” could only happen if “visiting the library” happened first. So you could say “I never even travelled to North Korea, let alone bought a souvenir there” – while buying a souvenir is small compared to travelling to NK, the travelling would have to happen first, so the phrase makes sense.
This is not confusion, but a different view point, just like 6 is 9.
In the previous example with the library, at least people are still reading books in a library. One should be happy that the library is being used. However, if people don’t even go to a library, that is more extreme because its existence will be futile.
“I’ve never bought a souvenir in North Korea, let alone traveled there.” is just another way to phrase the same fact from a different view point. Buying souvenirs is trivial and it would be trivial, if I had ever been to North Korea, and since I haven’t, it’s the more extreme of the two.
Do you understand now?
Shouldn’t the content warning be for Prescriptivism?
Prescriptivism is prescribing how language should or should not be used, and is generally avoided by all linguists who aren’t 19thC european aristocrats intent on using language as a class marker.
Descriptivism is just describing how language is used by its speakers, without passing judgement.
Ah hehe in my defense it was 4am :)
Prescriptivist takes should generally be reviewed while alert and sober, so that you don’t expose yourself to accusations of hypocrisy or incorrect pedantry!
Grammar changes, nobody really cares except linguists, let alone the common English speaker.
“use dictates form” is dumb; and allows the language to be driven by vapid ig famewhores. We allow for the unwashed to curate the language and we ultimately get people stupid enough to elect a serial felon to office. Twice.
get people stupid enough to elect a serial felon to office. Twice.
That’s already happened.
You may want to look to the disenfranchisement of the working class and the war on education to be the issue with that. Gatekeeping language doesn’t educate anyone and actually deters them from becoming engaged with language in the first place.
Off my chest - if you’re the kind of person that necessitates a content warning on this kind of post, you should be banned from the internet
My brother, it is a joke. (That I fucked up the first time.)
English language learner here. Would “let alone” basically have the same meaning than “not to mention”?
“not to mention” and “let alone” are both typically used with the more difficult or unpleasant things after the phrase. The main difference is that “not to mention” is usually used to bring something new into the conversation or to imply that the thing you’re mentioning needs a whole separate conversation.
“Let alone” is a way to add emphasis when denying something. Usually phrased like “I didn’t even X, let alone Y.” Y being the thing you want to deny, X being some first step toward Y or just something related that isn’t as bad as Y.
Some examples:
“Did you kill Dave?” “I didn’t touch him, let alone kill him”
“Can you walk?” “I can’t stand, let alone walk.”
The first part doesn’t even need to be a complete denial as long as it implies the second part is impossible:
“Can you run?” “I can barely stand, let alone run.”
I didn’t know this, I don’t think I used it incorrectly before, but thanks to you I’m going to see this every time now and it’s going to bug me. Thanks for the infection, haha.
Let alone try to understand how to use it.
Reading internet comments is a terrible addiction. Having to see people using language wrong, and realizing it’s almost always a native speaker is just one of the pains it brings you.
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Your literally making a mountain out of an anthill, let alone slightly overexeggerating a tiny nonissue. Get out of here with you’re language policing. Grammer nazis like you should be thrown into the specific ocean.
I’m sincerely curious whether your grammatical mistakes and mixing up metaphors is intentional.
Nobody who speaks English as their native language is using the idiom incorrectly.
They might not be using it traditionally, but if it parses it flies
You don’t need to explain descriptivism vs prescriptivism here. If they mentions one of these terms, they obviously knows what it means and why people could disagree.
Also, why narrow it down to native speakers? That’s the part you should have put more focus on, normally Descriptionists don’t care if the speaker says when pigs fly or if the lobster whistles on the mountain.
