2022-04-14 ศัพท์ น่าสับสน - Set – F - From . . .

Revision F

2022-04-14

ศัพท์ น่าสับสน - Set – F - From . . .

แนะนำการใช้ ตามที่ส่วนใหญ่ใช้ แต่ละท้องถิ่น 

ความหมาย อาจผันแปร ตาม ตำแหน่ง/หน้าที่ ในประโยค

 

From the beginning of time & anything more specific

Stephen Hawking 

            writes about the beginning of time, 

                       but few other people do. 

People who write “from the beginning of time” 

                      or “since time began” 

            are usually being lazy. 

 

Their grasp of history is vague, 

        so they resort to these broad, sweeping phrases. 

 

Almost never is this usage literally accurate: 

people have not fallen in love since time began, 

for instance, 

because people arrived relatively late on the scene 

                           in the cosmic scheme of things. 

 

When I visited Ferrara several years ago 

                       I was interested to see that 

the whole population of the old city 

                 seemed to use bicycles for transportation, 

cars being banned from the central area. 

 

I asked how long this had been the custom 

         and was told “We‘ve ridden bicycles for centuries.” 

Since the bicycle was invented only in the 1890s, 

I strongly doubted this 

(no, Leonardo da Vinci did not invent the bicycle

—he just drew a picture of what one might look like

—and some people think that picture is a modern forgery). 

 

If you really don’t know the appropriate period 

from which your subject dates, 

you could substitute a less silly but still vague phrase 

such as “for many years," or “for centuries”; 

 

but it’s better simply to avoid historical statements 

           if you don’t know your history.

 

Dictionary of Problem Words and Expressions:

From whence

Although this phrase has been widely used 

                 in previous centuries 

(even in the King James version of the Bible), it is wordy.

Omit from or whence

or just say where:

“Where did that boot come from?”