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Literally taken, "one of the only" is an oxymoron. They're either "the only" (no "one of") venomous mammal because there are no others, or there are others in w
by Arnavion 6y ago
Literally taken, "one of the only" is an oxymoron. They're either "the only" (no "one of") venomous mammal because there are no others, or there are others in which case they're "one of the few" or "one of the many" depending how many others there are.
At any rate, there are a bunch of search results for "one of the only" saying it's a neologism with the same meaning as "one of the few". So we're probably stuck with it now, just like we're stuck with "begs the question" used to mean "raise the question" and "two times longer" used to mean "two times as long".
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- pushrax 6y ago"leverage" used as a verb bugs me the most. The "-age" suffix is clearly established as a way to form a noun, in this case with the base verb "lever". If we treat "leverage" as a verb, "leverageage" is valid.
- gweinberg 6y ago"Lever" is already a noun."Lever" is the tool, "leverage" is what you get by using the tool.
- pushrax 6y agoYou can debate whether "leverage" comes from the noun or verb form of "lever" (which both exist, and the "-age" pattern is used for both nouns and verbs), but the main point is that "leverage" used as a verb breaks prior usage of "-age" in exactly the way I described. "leverage" has been used as a noun for centuries, but as a verb for only decades. It's a recent neologism.
- ncmncm 6y agoI.e. a neologism.