Split Infinitive - Famous Split Infinitives

Famous Split Infinitives

The opening sequence of Star Trek contains the phrase to boldly go where no man has gone before. This has varied in subsequent Star Trek works but the split infinitive remains in all of them.

The Oath of office of the President of the United States includes the text "to faithfully execute". In the 2009 inaugaration of Barack Obama, Chief Justice Roberts made a series of errors in adminstering Obama's oath of office. Steven Pinker traced some of these errors to the "shibboleth" against "split verbs", particularly the "myth" that it is "impossible to split an infinitive".

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Famous quotes containing the words famous and/or split:

    Sole and self-commanded works,
    Fears not undermining days,
    Grows by decays,
    And, by the famous might that lurks
    In reaction and recoil,
    Makes flames to freeze, and ice to boil.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    “Summer, you are the eucharist of death;
    Partake of you and never again
    Will midnight foot it steeply into dawn,
    Dawn veer into day,
    Nor the praised schism be of year split off year....”
    Allen Tate (1899–1979)