{"id":13912,"date":"2011-11-22T21:19:10","date_gmt":"2011-11-23T05:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/neology\/2011\/11\/22\/emotive-conjugations.html"},"modified":"2011-11-22T21:19:10","modified_gmt":"2011-11-23T05:19:10","slug":"emotive-conjugations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/2011\/11\/22\/emotive-conjugations\/","title":{"rendered":"Emotive conjugations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In 1948, Bertrand Russell, on a radio program called The Brains Trust<\/a><\/cite>, gave a joke example of an irregular verb conjugation:<\/p>\n

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I am firm; you are obstinate; he is a pig-headed fool.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Apparently Russell referred to this construction as an emotive conjugation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here are a few more examples; I believe these are from a New Statesman<\/cite> competition to come up with other emotive conjugations, but Wikipedia (incorrectly, I think) attributes the first two of them to Russell:<\/p>\n

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I am righteously indignant; you are annoyed; he is making a fuss over nothing.<\/p>\n

I have reconsidered the matter; you have changed your mind; he has gone back on his word.<\/p>\n

I am sparkling; you are unusually talkative; he is drunk.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

An about.com article<\/a> from 2008 lists more entries from that competition.<\/p>\n

I was thinking about this kind of thing the other day when a friend said something about me (to me) that put a positive spin on two less-flattering things others have said about (and to) me this year. So I combined the three into a conjugation:<\/p>\n

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I know my own mind; you like things to be just so; they have to have everything their way.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A few more pages with examples:<\/p>\n