Timeline for Unfamiliar construction from Nineteen Eighty-Four: "...had been used to gather there..."
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
22 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Mar 16, 2015 at 23:42 | history | edited | phenry | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Edited title to more clearly reflect the subject of the question
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| May 28, 2014 at 23:05 | vote | accept | George Newton | ||
| May 27, 2014 at 14:56 | answer | added | Peter Shor | timeline score: 8 | |
| May 27, 2014 at 8:02 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | Sounds outright barbarous to me. | |
| May 27, 2014 at 7:12 | comment | added | Rupe | Also bear in mind that it's a book in which there are lots of made-up words and new constructions. Are there similar "errors" in other books of Orwell's? If not then I think one should a) at least consider the possibility that the "errors" were deliberate and b) cut the editor a bit of slack in the case of 1984. | |
| May 27, 2014 at 6:51 | comment | added | WS2 | It should be possible from the surrounding context to determine whether he meant to say 'used to gather there', or 'had been used to gathering there'. Bear in mind in 1946, when Orwell wrote 1984, that he did not have the benefit of Word for Windows to correct errors, spellings etc. Everything was bashed out on a 'steam' typewriter. It was also a time when paper for book-publishing was still subject to wartime rationing in Britain. If typographical errors were discovered late, you couldn't afford simply to throw away a few thousand copies. | |
| May 27, 2014 at 6:41 | vote | accept | George Newton | ||
| May 28, 2014 at 23:05 | |||||
| May 27, 2014 at 6:38 | comment | added | anongoodnurse | As I commented above, one can say this device had been used to gather dust in the past... but not how Orwell wrote it. Just missed the proofreaders. | |
| May 27, 2014 at 6:37 | answer | added | Blessed Geek | timeline score: -4 | |
| May 27, 2014 at 6:30 | comment | added | George Newton | So can we safely conclude that Orwell's editor screwed up in 1948 and that no such English construction exists? | |
| May 27, 2014 at 6:18 | comment | added | F.E. | Here's a bitmapped version: books.google.com/… | |
| May 27, 2014 at 6:17 | comment | added | George Newton | @medica - No, this isn't an online version. This is a Signet Classic print version (I have the copy with me, that's where I copied the line from). amazon.com/1984-Signet-Classics-George-Orwell/dp/0451524934/… | |
| May 27, 2014 at 6:16 | comment | added | anongoodnurse | Online versions are often prone to errors. When reading them, one often has to let reason prevail. | |
| May 27, 2014 at 6:14 | comment | added | F.E. | 1984 is a novel written in the 40s, and that passage is in past-tense narrative mode. I'm not all that familiar with their writing conventions back then. But, from a superficial glance at that line and some surrounding lines, it seems that Orwell might have been using a convention that was intentionally putting a lot of fictional "backshifting" into the prose. | |
| May 27, 2014 at 6:14 | comment | added | George Newton | Wow. I didn't know such a famous author could let slip such a mistake. But this would explain some other areas in the book where there are grammatical oddities. | |
| May 27, 2014 at 6:12 | history | edited | anongoodnurse |
edited tags
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| May 27, 2014 at 6:11 | comment | added | anongoodnurse | Agree w/ @Kris - I googled but found no gathering. I think this missed the editor. It is not a construction used in English unless meaning (st) had been used to achieve an effect which is clearly not the meaning here. | |
| May 27, 2014 at 6:06 | history | edited | Kris | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 58 characters in body; edited tags
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| May 27, 2014 at 6:03 | comment | added | Kris | Did someone say that "this sentence is correct?" That should be a gerund I guess: used to gathering there. | |
| May 27, 2014 at 5:54 | answer | added | Erik Kowal | timeline score: 1 | |
| May 27, 2014 at 5:49 | history | edited | Erik Kowal | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
deleted 3 characters in body
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| May 27, 2014 at 5:45 | history | asked | George Newton | CC BY-SA 3.0 |