List of English Words With Disputed Usage - P

P

• pleasantry originally meant a joke or witticism (like in French plaisanterie). It is now generally only used to mean polite conversation in general (as in the phrase "exchange of pleasantries").

• people and persons – By some linguistic prescriptions, persons should be used to describe a finite, known number of individuals, rather than the collective term people. According to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage, this debate raged towards the end of the 19th century, but usage never shifted away from thie disputed sense, and all major current style guide recommends people in all cases.
  • Disputed usage: There are 15 people registered to attend.
  • Undisputed usage: There are countless people online at this moment.

• presently – Traditionally, presently is held to mean "after a short period of time" or "soon". It is also used in the sense "at the present time" or "now", a usage which is disapproved of by many prescriptivists, though in medieval and Elizabethan times "presently" meant "now" (but in the sense of "immediately" rather than "currently"). RH dates the sense of "now" back to the 15th century—noting it is "in standard use in all varieties of speech and writing in both Great Britain and the United States"—and dates the appearance of the sense of "soon" to the 16th century. It considers the modern objection to the older sense "strange", and comments that the two senses are "rarely if ever confused in actual practice. Presently meaning 'now' is most often used with the present tense (The professor is presently on sabbatical leave) and presently meaning 'soon' often with the future tense (The supervisor will be back presently)." M-W mentions the same vintage for the sense of "now", and that "it is not clear why it is objectionable." AHD4 states that despite its use "nowadays in literate speech and writing" that there is still " lingering prejudice against this use". In the late 1980s, only 50% of the dictionary's Usage Panel approved of the sentence General Walters is … presently the United States Ambassador to the United Nations. COD11 lists both usages without comment; CHAMBERS merely flags the sense of "now" as "N Amer, especially US".
  • Disputed usage: I am presently reading Wikipedia.
  • Undisputed usage: I will be finished with that activity presently.