[anupmathur]

Originally Posted by Sam Kapasi

Heh heh.
He stood there grinning like a monkey on heat while her grandma flung her panties at him. What fun!

... Not the grandma's misplaced affection, but the words "what fun!"

Heh heh.

I was, in fact, wondering more about the appropriateness of the grandmother throwing her own panties at him who 'stood there grinning like a monkey in heat'. ]
Should it not have been the grand daughter's panties that granny threw at him?

[Sam Kapasi]

Originally Posted by anupmathur

Heh heh.

I was, in fact, wondering more about the appropriateness of the grandmother throwing her own panties at him who 'stood there grinning like a monkey in heat'. ]
Should it not have been the grand daughter's panties that granny threw at him?

Indeed. Darn the proximity of the i and o keys on this infernal laptop.
No, in my mind the grandmother was throwing her bloomers at him. What fun!

We are trodding on dangerous ground here and should stop before we are warned by the rather tolerant mods.

[Ram]

Originally Posted by Sam Kapasi

.. We are trodding on dangerous ground here and should ...

Shouldn't that be "treading on dangerous ground"?

[anupmathur]

Originally Posted by Sam Kapasi

We are trodding on dangerous ground here and should stop before we are warned by the rather tolerant mods.

Warning well taken, but please clarify this doubt:
Should that not be 'treading'?
'Trodding' only shows up as a word in a Bob Marley song!

[hkanitkar]

Here we are, talking about monkies in heat and all I asked is whether 'what fun !' is correct english.
Anyways, since Yeti and anup have been wielding their tongues.. oops.. fingers enough to make us understand the language better - what fun !!

@anup - yeti ain't no diffren' than Bob marley ('cept for the weed i suppose ) !

[Sam Kapasi]

From The Suburban Ecstasies: 2007 Creative Writing MFA Rankings: The Kealey Scale (Long Post)

Do they have prejudices for or against the school that they're unlikely to reveal in speaking with you, that perhaps they can't even articulate themselves? You're trodding on dangerous ground if you simply find three strangers and use their "advice" as the guide for your life. Again, should one visit a school? Sure, it's a resource.

From the Chicago Sun-Times, Charleston Post and Courier and other news publications.

Wrecking havoc while trodding through woods
Chicago Sun-Times ; ... this one. Last October, Eduard Shevardnadze "found himself trodding through muddy woods in combat boots." In The Saginaw (Mich.) News, "Disney tale trods in history of fibs." In the Charleston (S.C.) Post and Courier, "Civil War novel trods dangerous ground ...

From Loving the Mud

We as a Nation have turned away from the authority of God and His Word. I believe we have BLINDERS on our eyes, and we refuse to see the HANDWRITING ON THE WALL. I believe America is trodding on dangerous ground. We have forgotten our GOD.

The references are in abundance. Of course they are all written by people who could potentially be as wrong as I. Or American. I suspect the latter though, but often there is little difference between being wrong and Yankee.

I love this word. Trod trod trod trodding. Trod.

It may not be classic English, but apparently it is acceptable. I imaging a trod to be more like a knee-high plod through the crap and a tread to be a series of light, fear-and-apprehension filled careful steps, lightly touching or floating over touching the crap. Gingerly, if I may add. From my imagination. What fun!

Of course this may be all in my politically incorrect and fertile imagination along with the grandma's-flying-undies fantasy.

I am willing to be wrong and have a debate. Anup? Thad? Ram?

[anupmathur]

LOL, Kantikar, I can see what fun you are having putting a space before each exclamation mark and not doing it for the commas and the full stops!
Be fair!


And now we see the Yeti going on a what fun® spree!
I'd like to see usage defined in a dictionary. Any dictionary will do. The print media these days often leaves us pulling our hair out!
And just because they (the authors) proliferate, it does not lend credibility to what they write in ignorance of the subject.


On the other hand, I am, as always, willing to learn. And to unlearn, too!

Wise men tread on dangerous ground; the others trod!

[Sam Kapasi]

Here is an interesting study from some years ago

From Language Log: Trodding, as in Plodding?

Trodding, as in Plodding?

In yesterday's New York Times an article on "Now, the search for the next diva of domesticity" explored the exciting possibilities for replacements for Martha Stewart, on the assumption that her legal troubles will cause her to lose her throne. One sentence in the article began this way: "Others trodding the Stewart path include...."

Trodding? This is an interesting mistake, in part because it obviously seemed natural enough to slip past the usually stern and vigilant NYT proofreaders.
The fate of English irregular verbs varies, of course. Lots of them retain their irregularity -- swear/swore, hide/hid, sleep/slept, go/went, freeze/froze, and so on. Some have slipped over into regularity; dream is heading in that direction, with its alternate past tenses dreamt and dreamed, both of them acceptable in Standard English.

Tread itself falls into this category, according to my Webster's Collegiate dictionary, which gives a regular past tense form treaded beside the irregular past tense trod. Occasionally the slippage goes in the opposite direction: the etymologically expected past tense of wear would be weared, which existed until Middle English times, but instead we have Modern Standard English wore -- because of rhyming verbs like swear/swore, bear/bore, and tear/tore. People make up irregular past tense forms for fun, like snuck instead of sneaked, and children and second-language learners often produce irregular past tense forms.

But replacing present-tense tread with trod , as in the NYT article, is the only example I can think of where a new non-past form has been based on an irregular past-tense form (though there probably are others that aren't occurring to me right now). The analogic process that produced trodding is ordinary enough, and I bet the regular verb plod played a role: both verbs have to do with walking, and both occur relatively infrequently, making them likely targets for analogical remodeling. And they rhyme. At the moment, tread is still the only Standard English non-past form of this verb; but that could change -- trod might replace it completely in the not too distant future.

I think my tendency to like it accompanies the liking to be correctly wrong in speech. An conscious educated anomaly, if you will. An effort to please and excite one's own mind and feed the ego with a false feeling of secret linguistic superiority.

Snuck too stands as one of my favourites as does anyhoo because of this. Add puns like "Under the given circumcisions" (one of my favourites and I've got away with this often on Team-BHP, I suspect you'll find a few strewn around the forum)

But, sticking to the debate at hand, if trod would eventually replace the non-past form of tread, then my imagination would indeed be wrong and as the writer rightly pointed out, my mind would be fusing plod with trod.
However this article was written in 2004 and 4 years is a generation by today's standards.

But I am no expert, in fact often wrong and quite happy to be corrected. What I write is often hasty and incorrect. I enjoy correction, it shows that people are reading and enjoying every bit of the written article.

I'm going to hold on to trodding.

[hkanitkar]

Ha ! I am not that good at punctuation, you see. But please clarify one thing : is it right to put a space after a word and before fullstop or a comma ?
I always thought that fullstop should be put immediately after the word; without any space.

Wise men tread on dangerous ground; the others trod!

@Sambhai - lage raho yaar ! We enjoy your use of English, as it enhances our understanding of the flexible nature of this, once foreign language.

Edit : corrections in punctuation

[Sam Kapasi]

Originally Posted by hkanitkar

Ha ! I am not that good at punctuation , you see .

Yes.

Originally Posted by hkanitkar

is it right to put a space after a word and before fullstop or a comma ?
I always thought that fullstop should be put immediately after the word; without any space .

Correct you are. Every punctuation mark is placed immediately after the word, with no space before. The space is always after.

Wise men tread on dangerous ground; the others trod!

Bravo!

[jassi]

I always thought full stops and commas are immediate and after them is a space.
This is an example of a full stop. This, however, is just an example.

[anupmathur]

Originally Posted by Sam Kapasi

I'm going to hold on to trodding.

Hold on to some well anchored bloomers if you must go trodding on dangerous ground!

With trod (and thereby 'tread') now having assumed its new meaning (a generation having gone by), it ought to be used in the following numerous ways:

We trod on dangerous ground.
We are treading on dangerous ground.
We tread on dangerous ground.
We intend to keep treading on dangerous ground.
We were silly to have gone trodding on dangerous ground.
We were, in fact, very silly to have trod dangerous ground.

Is that acceptable to all?

But we still cannot say, "We are trodding on dangerous ground".

So sad that the bravo quotation has fallen through! Trod has acquired a meaning that does not support that clever, spur-of-the-moment creation.

[Thad E Ginathom]

Maybe I'm treading dangerous ground here, but going back to an earlier point, I'd say that Sam was right first time with the heat.

An animal is said to be on heat, or in season. In season, of course, has a different meaning when it comes to menus, except for some creatures like praying mantises, to whom a mate and a snack are synonymous!

That is the usage I have always heard, but I haven't looked it up.

[Sam Kapasi]

Well, sorry Nick - but I actually meant to say IN heat in the first place. I struck the big O by mistake.

There are many who would use their right arm to do that.

[anupmathur]

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom

That is the usage I have always heard, but I haven't looked it up.

Strangely, the usage I have always heard is 'in heat'. That could well be because of the constant exposure to English, as ahe is spoke, on the sub-continent.

It wouldn't hurt to look up the 'correct' usage.
I keyed in 'on heat' in google and was presented with the entire first page full of usage of 'in heat'! Yes, Google actually ignored the search string!

Worth adding here that a search just now with the same search string threw up a lot of 'on heat' references, none relating to an animal 'in heat'!