Leo, Spencer is taking an (undue) advantage of his reading it a different
way:
When you wrote of Kirk Douglas AND descendants of Peter Stuyvesant as being
"amongst the descendants", without distinction, you were effectively using
"amongst" in both ways that I defined, simultaneously.
This is a strain that the word can hardly bear. In a limited sense this can
be right, since all of the people you named were surrounded by an assembly
of descendants, but some of them were part of this and one was not.
So, taking further the example from Funk and Wagnells, it is like saying
"Amongst the trees were an oak, an elm, a beech and a house". This literally
is true from one narrow angle, as you read the original statement, but not
from a wider perspective, as Spencer and others read it.
That he couldn't point this out as a collegial tip, to a busy & frequent
poster who learned English as a second language - while separately seeking
an end to the battle - is an ongoing problem for Spencer, but it need not
remain one for you or the rest of SGM.
Peter Stewart
"Leo van de Pas" <leovdpas@netspeed.com.au> wrote in message
news:mailman.1666.1188683274.7287.gen-medieval@rootsweb.com...
Read and digest it-----and then still say I was wrong.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Stewart" <p_m_stewart@msn.com
Newsgroups: soc.genealogy.medieval
To: <gen-medieval@rootsweb.com
Sent: Saturday, September 01, 2007 8:10 PM
Subject: Re: Sensible Crossposting To Genealogical, Cultural,Military And
Historical Newsgroups
Leo, "among" and "amongst" are used in a lot of ways that accord with
your understanding - for instance, Funk and Wagnells Standard Dictionary
gives as an example for its primary definition "a house among the trees",
where quite obviously the house is not suppsoed to _be_ a tree any more
than in your oringal post Kirk Douglas was supposed to _be_ a descendant.
The word can indicate both "one of an assembly", as Spencer insists, and
"one surrounded by an assembly", as you meant.
In the context of dicsussion on SGM it is, in general, preferable to
stick with the first because the scope for misunderstanding is minimal.
But in the course of daily posting to a newsgroup none of us can be
always precise in language. It would be a dull place if this became our
highest proirity.
Peter Stewart