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From: Chris Croughton <chris@keristor.net>
Newsgroups: alt.languages.english
Subject: Re: QUERY: "dead" battery
Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2006 18:12:33 +0100
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On 10 Aug 2006 16:24:55 -0700, katouna@yamaha-motor.co.jp
<katouna@yamaha-motor.co.jp> wrote:
> Miss Eos, thank you for your useful advice. I think you're right. I
> have an automobile engineering dictionary by a British writer which
> covers both British and American usage. In the dictionary, the entry
> of "dead battery" is defined as "= flat bettery", noting "dead battery"
> is an informal usage (whether it is an US usage is not mentioned).
My Concise Oxford English Dictionary (1999 -- I must get a recent
edition) has as definition 10b of 'dead':
(of a circuit, conductor, etc.) carrying or transmitting no current;
not connected to a source of electricity ('a dead battery').
It's a technical term, in this case, but since there is no notation to
say that it is either informal or US specific it can be assumed that it
is acceptable in any writing. In contrast, he entry for "flat battery"
says that it is mainly British (possibly the Commonwealth as well,
Australia and New Zealand for instance).
> Where an entry is referred to as "informal", I always wonder whetehr it
> is appropriate to use it in a formal context... In my limited
> experience, an American goverment offier used "tranny" (meaning
> transmission) in a letter addressed to us. I was a little surprised
> becuase I had thought tranny is a very informal and colloquial
> expresstion which shouldn't be used in a serious business letter???
To me, being brought up in the UK in the 1960s, a 'tranny' is a
'transistor radio' so I would have been very surprised! There are, I
think, degrees of formality, "dead battery" being used in fairly formal
writing (I don't think I've seen "flat battery" used much in the last 10
years or so; the Concise OED says it is a British specific term) whereas
I wouldn't expect to see 'tranny' (either meaning) in any formal
writing.
> Languages and their audience do evolve. It is hard to catch up with the
> trend while I'm in Japan!
It's hard to keep up even in the same countries, as discussions on this
newsgroup and others show! There are many words and phrases now in use
in (UK) English with which I am unfamiliar, since I am older than the
people who use them.
Asking native speakers about specific usage is always good,
because they do change (technical terms beoming common, words dropping
out of use, words formerly unacceptable in 'formal' writing being now
acceptable, etc.). I don't know any Japanese laguage (apart from
'arigato'!), is the same happening there? Do you also have the older
people who complain about the language becoming corrupted?
Chris C
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