Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Leave it to Yitzhak, the wizard of the searches, to find the weirdest
stuff on the web.

http://vocabulary-vocabulary.com/dictionary/plod.php
http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dictionary/entry/plod
http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/features/dictionary/DictionaryResults.aspx?refid=1861738513
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/plod
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=60809&dict=CALD
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=60810&dict=CALD
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/plod
http://www.wordsmyth.net/live/home.php?script=search&matchent=plod&matchtype=exact

Why list more? All of these, without exception, include either “slow”
or a synonym such as “laborious” as part of the definition of “plod”.
Hence the examples Yitzhak found are either oxymoronic or examples of
sloppy speech, which has, sadly enough, become rather common as people
use words without understanding what the words mean.

This could also mean that the language is changing, and old fogies
like myself and dictionaries have yet to catch up. If so, what these
writers mean by a quick “plod” I don’t know. Communication has been
lost.

Now what does this have to do with Biblical Hebrew? Nothing really.
Other than as an example of how we need to be careful before we
recognize an uncancellable meaning in a term in Biblical Hebrew.
Especially since so much less is known about Biblical Hebrew.

Karl W. Randolph.

On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 3:05 PM, Yitzhak Sapir<yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 8:03 PM, Stoney Breyer wrote:
>> I concur with Karl respecting "plod"; indeed, I would go further and say 
>> that "slow" is in
>> fact uncancellable in "plod" and that "plod quickly" is an oxymoron in 
>> *any* English
>> dialect.
>
> >From a google search on "plod quickly":
> http://www.amazon.com/Toscco-Happy-Family/dp/B000007TIP
> "The compositions can plod quickly along over massive speed bumps; they can 
> also
> slow down to take in the scenery."
>
> http://disapprovingblue.net/finished/the_order/order15.html
> "He heard the little boy's footsteps plod quickly up to it."
>
> http://books.google.com/books?id=s6U_mYyH1iMC&pg=PA49&lpg=PA49&dq=plod
> "Even though the horse was not afraid of the dead animal, he was still
> pleased to be
> leaving and needed no urging to plod quickly downhill."
>
> If we go ahead and claim that "Just that within a particular language
> at a particular
> time words may have meanings that are uncancellable" where a
> "particular language"
> may indicate a specific sociolect -- "in the variety of English that I
> grew up learning,
> namely that of the upper Midwest of the United States."  What in this
> case is the
> particular language and time of the entire Bible?
>
> Yitzhak Sapir