WE at Learn English or Starve don’t like to ride on the coattails of our betters, but every now and then something seriously good comes along that we just had to reblog it in its entirety (contrary to Internet etiquette).
This one came through the What’s Hot: Latest wire on our WordPress Dashboard:—
Hat tip to to J.R. Practix, a.k.a. Words from Dic(tionary).
(Formatting adjusted to our house style. Emphasis and boldfacings ours.)
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adequate
(adj) satisfactory or acceptable in quality or quantity
Five steps to building a loser
(for after all, they ARE manufactured, not born)
1. Teach he or she that they were born special and unique.
For if you’re going to fail and not measure up to the standards set around you, you need to be able to forgive it by mentioning your individual genetic configuration.
2. Tell he or she that all they have to do is their best.
Being human, our best is eventually defined as the amount of energy we are willing to expend at any moment on any situation.
3. You should also tell them that they deserve praise just for trying.
Addicting people to praise is leaving them to believe they they’re going to able to acquire the drug on the street. They won’t.
4. Let them know that excuses are the same as apologies.
Can we make this clear? An excuse is the opposite of an apology. An excuse is asking someone to understand why it was completely impossible for you to achieve the goal. An apology is an admission that the goal needed to be achieved, and unfortunately, you fell short.
5. And finally, communicate to he or she that EVERYONE WINS.
Matter of fact, print certificates of participation, place gold stars on their sheet or make sure the pizza party planned for the winners is diluted by including everyone who lost.
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We live in a world where we honor people who train, excel, pursue and win the prize. There is usually only one.
Contrary to Mr Webster (or Ms, so as not to be sexist) adequate is not satisfying. Adequate is also not acceptable.
Adequate is when people inform us that they don’t believe we can do better. It is why we will not put up with an adequate doctor, an adequate plumber or even an adequate person washing our car.
What we expect from others, we need to apply to ourselves. Since we know there is no reward for the first mile and blessing only in the second mile, how could we ever think we should be applauded … at the half-mile mark?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
J.R. Practix is a graduate of the Hormel Community College, where he received the coveted Summa Cum Ham award for bringing-home-the-bacon excellence in academics. He taught for one semester at the Mount Olympus School for the Divinely Challenged before receiving a grant to research the little-known and nearly non-existent disease of largepox, wherein he hopes one day to provide a vaccination without demand. He was married seven times in 41 years and retired undefeated. He now lives near Columbus, Ohio, USA, with his pet wolverine, Bo, where he raises buckeyes for profit and pleasure. His blog is Words from Dic(tionary).
Words and in-text image © J.R. Practix, Words from Dic(tionary), 20 Aug 2013.
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© Learn English or Starve, 2013 (to the extent permissible).
Featured image via Zazzle.com.
Learn English or Starve 
kategladstone
Tue 20 Aug 2013 @ 10.19pm UTC
The applause is not even being withheld till the half-mile mark; it’s being given at the STARTING line … for people who aren’t part of the line-up, as much as for those who are. (Equality, you know … )
For a concrete instance of the matter:
http://www.tonyattwood.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=943:pails-to-the-radio&Itemid=722
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thenakedlistener
Wed 21 Aug 2013 @ 7.11pm UTC
Could you tell us the bearing that story in the link has to this post, please?
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kategladstone
Fri 23 Aug 2013 @ 9.56am UTC
The story, I judged’ related to the post because the man in the story wishes to be given everything imaginable, on the grounds of his inadequacy.
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kategladstone
Tue 20 Aug 2013 @ 10.24pm UTC
Given your commitment to being better than adequate, I hope you’ll apologize for (and correct) the inadequate grammar of your first numbered point: “Teach he or she … “
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thenakedlistener
Tue 20 Aug 2013 @ 10.46pm UTC
Ach! Just let it ride. It’s from the original author. He’ll know about it through the pingbacks. The original author get the point across, and he/she vs. him/her isn’t too much of an upset. I think he’s a bit naughty like me, perhaps to use that on purpose just to jolt the reader out of mental slumber…
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kategladstone
Tue 20 Aug 2013 @ 10.27pm UTC
Let me know whether you would like other grammar in your post to be corrected; above, I alerted you to the most glaring of the inadequacies, but there are others in your musing on adequacy.
It would be pleasant to believe that the resulting irony was intentional. However, such a belief would almost certainly be incorrect.
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thenakedlistener
Tue 20 Aug 2013 @ 10.43pm UTC
*Smiles* Irony all and sundry is intentional (and premeditated!).
Let’s keep this blog this way for the moment. There are only 144 or so posts because the subject matter is so uninspiring and well covered by many other blogs.
For the moment, the mission of this blog is not about correct grammar. It is more about usage, especially practical, practicable and pragmatic usage.
Please point out grammar problems because every little bit helps.
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kategladstone
Tue 20 Aug 2013 @ 10.57pm UTC
All right, then … Let’s start with a couple of other grammar problems from the entry on adequacy:
“Being human, our best … ” is wrong because “our best” is not human (_we_ are human) and therefore “our best” cannot be what’s modified here by the phrase “being human.” The writer meant something like “Our best — since we are human — is in accordance with the amount of energy we are willing to expend on any matter.”
The sentence that begins “Matter of fact, … ” ought to have begun “As a matter of fact, … “
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thenakedlistener
Tue 20 Aug 2013 @ 11.07pm UTC
Yes, that’s the proper grammar. I could’ve corrected that too, but I wanted his message come through first and override its inherent grammatical weakness. As to what price any of us would put on the worth of the author’s message, I’ll leave that to our individual pricing model.
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kategladstone
Tue 20 Aug 2013 @ 10.58pm UTC
In one of your own replies, “The original author get [sic] the point across” suffers from (I presume) careless typing.
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thenakedlistener
Tue 20 Aug 2013 @ 11.10pm UTC
Oh, come on, Kate, do we have to be THAT fastidious or diligent about typos. It’s 11.02pm where I am. And it’s been a hard day at work too for me. It’s not careless typing – it’s just mistyping a word. Happens to all, even after pressing the button. Our mileages vary.
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kategladstone
Tue 20 Aug 2013 @ 11.24pm UTC
Fine; I’m not always sure if something is, or isn’t, a typo. I tutor various subjects (one is English), and was once disconcerted by a college junior whom I knew to _speak_ the language very correctly. She had written something like “The farmer have sixty acres” (I forget the exact wording, but the error was of that type) — when I pointed out to her that se would never have _said_ it that way, she answered: “True — but I was writing, which is harder, so I didn’t feel like conjugating the verb right then.” (I’m still trying to figure out that one.)
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thenakedlistener
Tue 20 Aug 2013 @ 11.32pm UTC
Nah, it’s totally okay. I completely understand your position. If I were to teach (heaven help us!), I’d probably do the same. More likely my head would explode first. Yes, I myself have been through that territory of verb mistakes you mentioned (as recipient as much as instigator).
I have to say your student has come up with an excuse that’s rather well put, though. I’m pilfering it. The cheque will be in the mail.
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thenakedlistener
Tue 20 Aug 2013 @ 11.14pm UTC
There’s a missing question mark in “…about typos” too. See what I mean…
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thenakedlistener
Wed 21 Aug 2013 @ 7.18pm UTC
For something in the order of “get(s)” or ‘he/she’ vs. ‘him/her,’ I think a more pragmatic route is simply to regard those as typos and then move on.
In a short piece such as this from the original author, those things don’t present too much of a barrier to overall understandability.
If it were a much longer piece, or that the original author makes those mistakes repeatedly, that might be a different story.
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thenakedlistener
Wed 21 Aug 2013 @ 7.21pm UTC
I see you too are not immune to careless typing:-
> when I pointed out to her that se would never have _said_ […]
Yet I wouldn’t actually call it careless typing, especially since yours was a short comment. You just mistyped, that is all.
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kategladstone
Thu 22 Aug 2013 @ 12.03am UTC
I am notoriously not immune thereto!
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Cynthia Lam
Thu 22 Aug 2013 @ 7.32am UTC
The post author had already explained in the introduction that he reblogged this from another site. The grammar or spelling mistakes should be pointed out the author of the original article. It is not necessary to tell the post author that one of his replies contained a typing mistake.
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kategladstone
Thu 22 Aug 2013 @ 12.08pm UTC
I’ve also told the original author.
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