Timeline for Is this an edge use of "toted" or a typo for "touted"?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
14 events
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| Dec 8, 2021 at 2:35 | comment | added | Tinfoil Hat | @DjinTonic: If they do, and if dictionary entries are considered descriptive rather than prescriptive, then they would be right, eventually, anyway. But before that, ask why they are doing that, and look at the etymology for reckon and count — it's the same whether it means calculate, number, regard, or consider. There's no place for consider in the definition of tout. | |
| Dec 8, 2021 at 2:22 | comment | added | DjinTonic | @TinfoilHat Perhaps that's too weak. "The new mayor was touted as the answer to the city's problems during his campaign." It seems OK for the meaning of the OP's sentence if "toted" is a typo. "Promote" is one definition. // Do you think some folks think toted is a synonym for touted rather than being a typo for it? | |
| Dec 8, 2021 at 1:39 | comment | added | Tinfoil Hat | @DjinTonic: Where did you get considered as a synonym for touted? | |
| Dec 7, 2021 at 22:50 | comment | added | DjinTonic | Touted works: held up as/promoted/considered | |
| Dec 7, 2021 at 22:27 | comment | added | Tinfoil Hat | Here's another: Its subsequent breakup by a Supreme Court ruling in 1911 is toted as marking the end of an era and a distant moment in corporate management. Right? Wrong... Touted doesn't work here. | |
| Dec 7, 2021 at 22:13 | comment | added | DjinTonic | @TinfoilHat Tout works for me in this example: "to make much of : PROMOTE, TALK UP" I don't know what's going on with the tote. That is the usual sense I see when I encounter tout. | |
| Dec 7, 2021 at 21:53 | comment | added | Tinfoil Hat | Here's one example from Google Books: Because the American police officer represents a decentralized government, they are public servants who are often toted as armed, occupying forces. I can't get any synonym of tout to fit well here. It means seen as or regarded as. (Search toted as in Books.) | |
| Dec 7, 2021 at 21:52 | comment | added | Andy Bonner | Looking at FumbleFingers' list, I'm inclined to say it's simply a not-uncommon usage error. If it were more widespread it would be a secondary usage, but I'm not sure it adds up (totes up?) to that yet. And see, again, I'd find a casual error unlikely in a book and a passage so self-consciously concerned with usage and definitions. | |
| Dec 7, 2021 at 21:43 | comment | added | DjinTonic | I'm seeing "toted" used for "touted" in Google Books -- are these all typos? | |
| Dec 7, 2021 at 21:22 | comment | added | DjinTonic | @AndyBonner I think the ELU totalizer is currently displaying odds in favor of it being a typo. Criterion makes more sense than qualifier to me. | |
| Dec 7, 2021 at 21:16 | comment | added | Andy Bonner | Again, my misgiving is that this always seems to regard arriving at a total of a number of things (TinfoilHat's 1939 entry makes it pretty clear that the etymology is simply an abbreviation of "total," not unlike the modern slang "totes" for "totally"). This reading would depend on implying a number of other unspecified "qualifiers," and it still seems odd to apply it to the individual entry rather than the group. (It might seem more likely if it were "is often toted among its qualifiers.) No, at the moment I think it's an (ironic) typo. | |
| Dec 7, 2021 at 20:25 | history | edited | DjinTonic | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Dec 7, 2021 at 20:19 | history | edited | DjinTonic | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Dec 7, 2021 at 20:13 | history | answered | DjinTonic | CC BY-SA 4.0 |