Cephalogenic

or, stuff that I dragged out of my head

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Location: Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada

Saturday, November 18, 2006

Consider This

In USA Today's review of "For Your Consideration", the following bizarre sentence:

Hollywood is rife for satire, but it's been done before.

"Rife" is an adjective meaning "widespread" or "abundant". Saying something is "rife for" something else doesn't make any sense: when "rife" takes any preposition, it nearly always takes "with", as, say "rife with disease". "Ripe", on the other hand, is another adjective meaning (among other things) "ready to undergo something", and often takes the preposition "for" as a way of saying, "It's been waiting to happen".

"Ripe for satire", Claudia Puig and your editors, assuming there are any. "Ripe".

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