WORD IN THE HAND: SO-CALLED
Few are called but many are so-called — or so they allegedly say
A column to satisfy your inner grammar nerd
As much as I eschew social media, sometimes rubies and diamonds come from these parts. A friend I know as Mtu Huria (Twitter codename @ConverseChatty1) issued two challenges to me this week, prefaced: “Please help on these two things before I lose both my jaws.”
The first was this: “Have you noticed that people tend to use ‘so-called’ when referring to the real thing, as in ‘so-called car’ when referring to a car? Has the meaning of ‘so-called’ been reassigned?”..
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