ROUGHSHOD

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ROUGHSHOD

Postby Dr. Goodword » Thu Apr 28, 2005 11:21 pm

• roughshod •

Pronunciation: rêf -shahd • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Adjective and Adverb

Meaning: 1. Of horses: wearing shoes with protruding nails to prevent slippage. 2. Brutal or brutally, without concern for others or their opinions.

Notes: Today's word comes from the irregular past participle of the verb to shoe: shoe, shod, shod (formerly shodden). It appears in two other words reflecting on the quality of work, slipshod "wearing shoes loosely on the feet" and "of poor quality", and shoddy, probably a reduction of slipshoddy.

In Play: Don't forget the original meaning of this Good Word: "Randy Marathon rode his horse roughshod on the muddy course." Occasions do arise when it might be used. The second meaning, of course, is far more common today: "Harold ran roughshod over the people in his office until he noticed the voodoo dolls appearing his desk each morning."

Word History: Rough comes from Old English ruh, which would have come from an original root *rugh-, found in other words, too. There is a Norwegian dialect with a word rugga "a coarse coverlet" from the same root that is the probable origin of our rug. Swedish ragg "ruffled hair, clump" is another cousin, which may be the source of rag. The difference in sense between the English and Swedish may have been developed through the adjectives ragged and raggy, and Swedish raggig "shaggy, rough, coarse". (A 'thank you' and a tip of Dr. Goodword's hat to Katy Brezger today for pointing out the role of shoes in our ideas of quality.)
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Postby Brazilian dude » Thu Apr 28, 2005 11:47 pm

I remember seeing shoed alongside shod in a few books. What is your view on this? Google has 41.700 hits for shoed and 1 040 000 for shod, so the shod horse seems to be at an unquestionable advantage over the shoed one.

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Postby Apoclima » Fri Apr 29, 2005 3:57 am

Attributive and predicative forms ..... are different for a number of completive participles......
A few additional variants of these patterns are heard in molten : melted, swollen : swelled, and stricken : struck. Note also clad : clothed as well as shod : shoed. A number of other forms ending in -en exist only as adjectives; e.g. misshapen. Cf. dog-bit with bitten.
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Postby Brazilian dude » Fri Apr 29, 2005 10:47 am

What's attributive (or predicative?) in this: I didn't tell the defendant on that occasion that I had shod a horse for him once.?

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SHOD VS SHOED

Postby Dr. Goodword » Fri Apr 29, 2005 3:22 pm

What you have seen is evidence of what linguists call "morphological leveling", the tendency for irregular forms to become regular. My grandmother and grandfather used the past tense and participle "holp" for "help", long after it had been leveled throughout most dialects. They lived in the South where language change is slower than the speech.

The always said, "shod", of course. Shod is still the only accepted form for the past tense, although most dictionaries will allow either "shod" or "shodden" as the past participles.
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Postby Brazilian dude » Fri Apr 29, 2005 3:59 pm

Right, I was aware of that, and I've always used shod myself, and it kind of bothers me to see new "regular" past and past participles creeping in (remember the thread about slunk/slinked? or was it slung/slinged? :wink: ). Maybe it's what Anders said on that occasion, when you have drilled something into your head, you feel outraged if a newer "simplified" form starts being used. That's the same way I feel about lie and lay.

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Postby tcward » Fri Apr 29, 2005 4:02 pm

I would make a case for some circumstances to allow shoed.

The white-shoed lady was clearly oblivious to the cultural habits of the Genteel Southerner, as it was still February, despite the warm weather.

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Postby Brazilian dude » Fri Apr 29, 2005 4:15 pm

Sure, Tim, but that's shoe as a noun. Good point, though.

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Postby tcward » Fri Apr 29, 2005 4:25 pm

No, it's shoed as an adjective, which is close relative to the past participle.

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Postby Brazilian dude » Fri Apr 29, 2005 4:27 pm

But she was the lady in white shoes, wasn't she? I would say that white-shoed is a compound adjective composed of an adjective white and a noun shoe. I might be wrong though, I never really gave much thought to this.

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Postby Brazilian dude » Fri Apr 29, 2005 4:29 pm

Do you want to know why I think it's a noun and not an adjective? Because you may say a two-bedroom house or a two-bedroomed house. Besides, the verb bedroom exists (at least until now), from which you'd get a past participle bedroomed, which could be used as an adjective. Again, I might be wrong.

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Postby tcward » Fri Apr 29, 2005 5:14 pm

So is white-haired an adjective or a noun?

The white-haired lady in front needs to be excused.

Sounds like an adjective to me.

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Postby Brazilian dude » Fri Apr 29, 2005 5:15 pm

White-haired, as well as white-shoed, is evidently an adjective, what I said is that shoe and now hair are nouns, not adjectives. So you have adjectival compounds composed of an adjective and a noun. Such compounds made up of two adjectives doesn't seem plausible to me. I've only seen the one I discussed above and adverb-adjective compounds, like in a well-done job.

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Last edited by Brazilian dude on Fri Apr 29, 2005 5:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby tcward » Fri Apr 29, 2005 5:17 pm

You're showing your linguistic prejudices.

If I had used some fancy Latin word for "white-haired" it wouldn't have raised an eyebrow.

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Postby Brazilian dude » Fri Apr 29, 2005 5:19 pm

You're showing your linguistic prejudices.
:?
If I had used some fancy Latin word for "white-haired" it wouldn't have raised an eyebrow.
:?

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