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Re: What is the best free software for creating & editing PDFs nowadays

Cross-posted to 5 groups.

Followups directed to: alt.usage.english

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Marion <marion@facts.com> writes:
> it's kind of like when I ask people to use "lend" as a verb vs "loan"
> as a noun; or when I notice people using "further" for "farther" in
> terms of distances; or when people use "less" instead of "fewer" for
> things that can be counted; or when people use "dirt" when they really
> mean "soil"; or when they call a "stone" a "rock" when all of these
> things are actually not what people think.

- “Lend” is indeed not currently in use as a noun, outside of Scottish
  and northern English dialects, where it has been in use as a noun
  (meaning “loan”) since at least 01575, with attestations up to the
  present day.
  <https://archive.org/details/oed6aarch/page/n208/mode/1up>

- “Loan” has been in use as a verb (as well as a noun) meaning “to lend”
  since at least 01200, with attestations pretty continuously for 800
  years up to the present day.
  <https://archive.org/details/oed6aarch/page/n385/mode/1up>

- “Further” has been in use with the meaning “farther” in terms of
  distances since at least 01578, with attestations up to the present
  day except for the 18th century.
  <https://archive.org/details/oed04arch/page/n631/mode/1up>

- “Less” has been in use with the meaning “a smaller number of; fewer”
  since at least King Ælfred in 0888, making this 1138-year-old meaning
  the longest-standing one you ask people to refrain from using.
  <https://archive.org/details/oed6aarch/page/n221/mode/1up> (A.I.1.c,
  bottom of the left column)

    Additionally, “less” has the meaning “Of not so great size, extent,
    or degree”, a meaning which is not shared by “fewer”, and is
    eminently applicable to things that can be counted.  For example,
    driving to work at 90 kilometers per hour uses *less* resources than
    driving to work at 120 kilometers per hour, because your fuel
    consumption is lower, but it doesn’t use *fewer* resources; it uses
    *the same number* of resources (gasoline, the car, the brake pads,
    etc.), just to a smaller extent.

- “Soil” and “dirt” are both fairly polysemous.  Maybe you can explain
  which usage you are taking issue with?  For reference, the meanings of
  “dirt” given in
  <https://archive.org/details/oed03arch/page/n409/mode/1up> are
  excrement; filth; worthless things; land; people you don’t like;
  mud/soil; gangue; washdirt; dirtiness; meanness; bad weather; poison
  gas in a mine; and to make dirty.  The meanings of “soil” given in
  <https://archive.org/details/oed9aarch/oed9aarch/page/n384/mode/1up>
  are the ground; plains; site; estate; land/region; place of one’s
  nativity; domicile; materials of the ground such as sand and clay;
  mould/earth; sill; and lintel.

Similar remarks surely apply to the historical meanings of “stone” and
“rock”, but it is getting to be my bedtime, and I think this adequately
makes the point that, in general, you seem to be taking up arms against
the Oxford English Dictionary and centuries of established English
usage.  Perhaps you have access to an arbiter of English meanings more
authoritative than the OED and the English-language literary corpus?
What might that be?

Kragen

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Re: What is the best free software for creating & editing PDFs nowadays Kragen Javier Sitaker <kragen@canonical.org> - 2026-08-28 22:45 -0300

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