Shrilling
There you go again.
"Shrill" cannot be used as in "someone is shrilling". It is grammatically incorrect and reads horribly. I read somehwere you were over 50. How have you managed this many years on planet earth without learning the basics of the english language?
Someone is shrilling about the rules of grammar without actually knowing the rules of grammar.
Lets use some examples to illustrate how common TPTB's usage is: "He is programming the coin to act as decentralized cash. She is speculating Dash is on its last leg. Mike Hearn is harping on Bitcoin's politics."
It's being used as a present participle verb in your example, so I'm not sure why you think it is being used incorrectly. Am I missing something? Even if you change the tense, the function is the same:
"He was making a shrill sound. He was shrilling all night about grammar and some guy online. He will shrill the song so badly, that none of us will want to hear it again."
Given that shrill is a noun, an adjective, an adverb, and a verb, it would be hard to argue that it can't be used in any of those functions. Though the verb form of shrill is of older decent and perhaps sounds out of date, it doesn't mean it can't be used in that tense or come back in vogue similarly to the reemergence of the word trolling, which has much more to do with making something go around and around in a circular way than it does with monsters who live under bridges. I also think you are missing that TPTB_need_war has cross-bred the words shrill and shill to create a very descriptive word that can be used interchangeably for shill and shrill. Words are very adaptive and new usages can add richness to the language and a greater degree of precision in speech--personally, I like this addition.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/shrill Yes but you still cant be 'a shrill'. His usage was wrong and weird. You and him are both wrong get over it
I was correct. I was correcting the quoted material and you are incorrect as I pointed out. I wasn't following or referencing any prior arguments--though I pointed out that TPTB_need_war's coinage of shill+shrill is perfectly fine (Shakespeare coined as many phrases as anyone and it would be tough find a more masterful user of the English language). The point of language is communication and precision, and shrill encapsulates an angry shill better than any other word I've seen--would you rather him say shrill-shill like a Dr. Seuss' character?
But he isn't shakespeare. He's a doddery old man who repeatedly spells the word "shill" wrong as "shrill". In fact I've never seen him spell it right.
I am still correct as you cannot be "a shrill". You can be shrill, you can sound shrill but you can not "be a shrill" be a shrill what? Exactly it sounds wrong and stupid.
You're correct if you assume he can't coin a new word, which is a pretty absurd presumption. It reminds me when the dictionary makers tried to pick and choose words, not based on what people said and meant, but on their own preferences.
Noun 1. shrilling - a continuing shrill noise; "the clash of swords and the shrilling of trumpets"--P. J. Searles
A sound can be a shrill, just as a sound can be a thump or screech, the sentence, "I heard a shrill outside my door," is no more incorrect as, "I heard a thump outside my door, " or "I heard a screech outside my door."
I'm trying to think of a sound that doesn't have this property, but it seems most sounds can be used as noun and verb. I think your confusion is that it is almost entirely used as adjective and adverb, which can make it sound outlandish to the modern ear (not that that is the way TPTB_need_war was using it or intended it). Personally I like its use to describe a shill who is shrilling text to hide the flaws in whatever product he is endorsing.
Stop your shrilling seems like it could be the mantra for everyone tired of wading through endless diatribes and meaningless text.
Language isn't a set of objective rules, it's more of "what is standard, what is accepted, and what is preferred"--none of which lends itself well to "you're wrong" argumentation. A great example is Emily Dickinson's inventions in punctuation--are you going to tell her she can't invent punctuation or her poems aren't written correctly? Many an editor who did, now looks like an imbecile for missing her genius.
