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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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.
or could only happen if X also did first.
You can’t check out a book if you don’t go to the library. What I mean by more extreme is this, that it requires the first one as a prior condition, or is otherwise asserted to be less likely to happen.
My on the spot made up definition may not have been the clearest :)
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.
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.)
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 :)
I think there is a phrase (at least in my native language) ”X, not even Y” where meaning is the opposite - Y should be less extreme case. Maybe them mix this phrases?
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.
You don’t know what you ask, traveler. My strongest potions would kill a dragon, let alone a man.
Interestingly, a short bit later in the video, the usage feels reversed: My potions are fit for a beast, let alone a man.
It’s not my pet peeve, but it does irk me. I’ll stand with you against the wronglings.
Thanks for this, we don’t want to loose sight of the correct usage.
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
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. 🌍👨🏾🚀🔫👩🏾🚀
In regards to anxious: I suspect this usage is similar to “anxiously awaiting” just morphed slightly. “I’m anxiously awaiting a raise” makes sense as a sentence, but is a bit clunky.
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I can’t even use let alone idiomatically, let alone use it in an interesting way!
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.
Thanks for the copy pasta.
People literally use it wrong all the time.
Ok.
Now do ‘emails’ and ‘the ask’.
