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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
The database already contains ‘little lone.’ None of these phrases makes a lot of sense, including the original. Examples-
I have always planned on having an unknown donor, simply because I don’t really know many men, letter lone many I would ask to be a donor …
www.nt.bubhub.com.au/community/forums/s … d.php?t…
... i want to know the reasons behind it that they would rather risk spreading infections in other peoples children letter lone there own …
www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=76193543617&topic=8042
Well then I’m not a true Bronco fan. And Clinton isn’t even a good player letter lone a Bronco’s legend.
www.cricsim.com/showthread.php?t=492&page=4
Plus, your current statement about brainwashing isn’t specific to Theism, letter lone Christianity.
www.4forums.com/.../1166-christianity-m … ing-3.html
I said that the chance of the evolution of a horse was that small, letter lone anything else.
forum.quoteland.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/770193847/m/.../p/2
I mean, you’d be lucky to find a CD player that cheap, letter lone the whole package of a CD Clock Radio in one.
sharedreviews.com/electronics/radios/cd-clock-radio-jl-cd811
As I read this article, I couldn t believe it had been printed, letter lone submitted!
nomizo31.xanga.com/631257215/item/
... racers are slack by nature in this country regarding reading entry forms letter lone remembering if they’ve sent an entry form in or not
www.rctech.net/forum/australian…/2295 … ne-61.html – Cached
Letter lone I cannot comprehend something having mass and no volume, I was clueless about something else.
forums.philosophyforums.com/threads/is—5138-24.html
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Wow! It’s amazing to me how widespread something so bizarre can be.
You wrote:
None of these phrases makes a lot of sense, including the original.
I disagree there. The original makes perfectly reasonable sense to me. The construction let alone NPx instructs the hearer/reader to construe the subject matter without taking NPx into consideration, which is letting it (leaving it) alone. NPx is (always, I think) an extreme form of the subject matter, and the idea is that even when only the non-extreme forms are considered, the point holds; so it will hold even more strongly when NPx is considered (a from of a fortiori argumentation, I guess.) In my colloquial English the phrase never mind is a close synonym: E.g. the first example could be I don’t really know many men, never mind many/men I would ask to be a donor . Again, the notion is “leave NPx out of consideration.â€
.
Still, I expect a lot of people see it as you do, and if it really is that opaque, the growth of letter lone, little lone etc. is much more understandable.
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2010-07-17 05:52:22)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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Thanks for the elucidation, David. ‘Let alone’ was opaque to me yesterday, but it is transparent today.
Still, I think the phrase is opaque for many people- if you poke around you’ll discover that it’s frequently misused. And the opacity, as you observe, explains why it’s so eggcornable.
Last edited by klakritz (2010-07-17 09:08:29)
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