IVIV (11) 167

[Michael Bailey]

Bekah  wrote:
> On Oct 24, 2009, at 6:05 AM, Clément Lévy wrote:
>
>> - "some place besides a Pacific island whose name he couldn't pronounce"
>> Isn't there a typo here? shouldn't it be "beside?"
>
> Quoting the whole sentence,  "This had to be a message from some place
> besides a Pacific island whose name he couldn't pronounce."
>
>

a) "beside" is more of a concrete locational thingie,
b) "besides" is more like "in addition to"

one of my friends' families back in high school used to all say,
quite often, "that's besides the point"

which is an extension of the distinction I made in a and b,
but it's a literalist extension...

common usage is "beside the point", retaining the concreteness,
as if there were a point out there somewhere that somebody's aiming
at, and someone else had aimed at and reached a slightly different
point off to the side
(like my comment here...)


-- 
--- "Bearing in mind that either I don't know
or it'll be my ass if I tell you, what is it, man?" - Coy Harlingen