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CAPE FEAR MEMORIAL BRIDGE CLOSURE: UPDATES, RESOURCES, AND CONTEXT

Friday Feedback for October 9, 2015

There are few things public radio listeners seems to like to more than wrestling with language usage. I’m the same way, and since I have this bully pulpit, I get to play (in the words of Dave Barry) Mr. Language Person and be a referee once in a while. We have a couple of good ones today.

Listener Bill DiNome wrote:

I had a chuckle this morning upon hearing that the theater at CFCC had to be emptied [Monday night] due to a smoke condition. What amused me was how the sentence was cast: that it was the people who were “evacuated.” While that's literally possible in a few cases, more likely it was the building that was evacuated. As Merriam-Webster tells us, to evacuate is to remove the contents of, or to discharge from the body as waste, to void. (BTW, it's a lesson I learned in a newsroom scene in season 5 of "The Wire." Who says TV is a wasteland?)

I hate to break it to Bill, but from where I sit the meaning of “evacuate” we used is in fact well-established. If you Google the phrase — in quotes “people were evacuated” unquote — you will get 382,000 hits. But as the fella says, you could look it up. So I did. Despite what Bill says, both Merriam-Webster and the Oxford University Pressonline dictionaries list as their first definition for evacuate “remove (someone) from a place of danger to a safe place”, followed by the building definition Bill prefers. Proving once again that it’s never safe to rely on television for grammar instruction, Bill. Stick to public radio instead.

In the same vein, a listener called me this week to register concerns about one of our announcers using the terms “several” and “a few” synonymously. My reaction here was “eh”, and also “no harm, no foul.” The listener felt that “several” implies more than “a few”. He went on to say that it’s this kind of sloppy thinking that is responsible for the decline of Western civilization, and led directly to the Iraq War and to Donald Trump. I don’t know for sure what is responsible for Donald Trump, but please don’t blame public radio for that either.

Still, there is an interesting semantic point here. They might refer to the same number, but “several” has a connotation of abundance, whereas “a few” connotes scarcity. Say you have exactly 4 steaks in the freezer. You spouse says there’s only one for the two of you. You might say, “No, there are several.” But if the spouse says that there are plenty for the big picnic, you might say “No, there are only a few.”

Here endeth the lesson.

One way to give feedback to WHQR is through our Facebook page, or the Comments section in stories on the whqr.org website. Kelly wrote in response to Barbara Bush’s blog post about the 5 best hot dogs in town:

Sam’s Hot Dogs has the best Hot Dogs and their Barbeque is great! I love the convenient drive thru when on the run.

Clearly, more research is needed on this vital issue.

This week we’re starting to get early pledges towards our Fall Member Drive, which starts on Wednesday the 21st. Some of them have comments for us. Here are a few:

Holly from Wilmington wrote:

Love Lan Nichols' Front Street Blues and George Scheibner.

Carolyn from Southport wrote:

Wish our Bose radio could pick up your classical station.

And Philip Gerard, one of our commentators, wrote:

Keep up the excellent work.

We’d love to hear from you on Friday Feedback. You can always leave a message via email to feedback@WHQR.org. Our Feedback Phone is 910-292-9477. And thanks for your feedback.