I think if I talk about "these guys" or "those guys", I'm almost certainly talking about a set of inanimate objects. "Those guys" might be a particular style of chair, for example, or a problematic class of door lock.
Perhaps "guys" is only gender-neutral in the second person.
People?
I am having a hard time hearing a water asking "Are you people ready for drinks?" Maybe it will come to this. I see no indication of it at the moment. And a white person addressing a table full of black people as "you people"? Yeah, THAT's a good idea.
I am having a hard time hearing a water asking "Are you people ready for drinks?"
I most often hear "is everyone ready to order" if for some odd reason the waiter doesn't think "are you ready to order" is sufficiently clear. If the waiter is particularly obnoxious, it will be "are we ready?" - I hadn't actually intended to have dinner with the waiter.
I think I have been addressed as "you guys" by a waiter in a restaurant, but it's only happened occasionally.
Here "you guys" is fairly common. "Is everyone ready to order" strikes me as something you would say to a group of children, and thus very patronizing used with adults.
Re the elusive second person plural: today at work I was waiting to speak to our receptionist while she was on the phone to the photocopier company and heard her say, "And when can you come in to fix the other copier we got from ye?" Always happy to know that "ye" is alive and kicking.
Something different... "Runs good, never wrecked" is a common phrase in second-hand car adverts in the USA. I had always understood "wrecked" to mean destroyed, (e.g. ship wreck, train wreck) but in the USA it will commonly be taken to mean anything needing a body repair. Perhaps I've been away too long, but is it ever so used in the UK now?
Something different... "Runs good, never wrecked" is a common phrase in second-hand car adverts in the USA. I had always understood "wrecked" to mean destroyed, (e.g. ship wreck, train wreck) but in the USA it will commonly be taken to mean anything needing a body repair. Perhaps I've been away too long, but is it ever so used in the UK now?
Not in my experience. In the UK, I'd translate that slogan as meaning 'it's never been a write off', i.e. damaged so badly in an accident that it has to be scrapped.
There are always alleged to be cases of cars that are write offs but somehow get reinstated. That's likely to imply some sort of insurance fraud. There was one classic case in the law books of a second hand car that turned out to be the front half of one car welded onto the back half of another.
'Runs good' isn't really a comfortable usage here either. We'd tend to say a 'good runner' or 'runs well'.
I have never heard the term: "Never Wrecked" around my neck of the woods, but I have heard "No major accident." What they are driving at is when the chassis of a vehicle has been bent or changed because of a hard event. There are outfits that will try to realign a wrecked chassis but it often cannot be done. Usually, a car whose chassis is wrecked is totaled, meaning it is an insurance write-off.
Another phrase heard is hurricane-prone areas is "No Water Damage," This means the vehicle has not been underwater which can ruin a drive train (engine, transmission, and wheels). However, having gone through one hurricane, I can testify to how heavy rain can get into the interior of an enclosed vehicle and cause damage to the carpet, the upholstery and the electrical system too,
A car that's wrecked is "totalled" here. From total write-off, meaning not worth fixing in the insurance company's assessment. You can personally get totalled as well, meaning very drunk.
Which leads me to drunk driving. Which is what it's called, or and impaired or .08 (zero eight). "He got a zero eight (an impaired) last night". We see DUI more frequently which I think is the American term.
Something different... "Runs good, never wrecked" is a common phrase in second-hand car adverts in the USA. I had always understood "wrecked" to mean destroyed, (e.g. ship wreck, train wreck) but in the USA it will commonly be taken to mean anything needing a body repair. Perhaps I've been away too long, but is it ever so used in the UK now?
Not in my experience. In the UK, I'd translate that slogan as meaning 'it's never been a write off', i.e. damaged so badly in an accident that it has to be scrapped.
There are always alleged to be cases of cars that are write offs but somehow get reinstated. That's likely to imply some sort of insurance fraud. There was one classic case in the law books of a second hand car that turned out to be the front half of one car welded onto the back half of another.
It is possible to legally drive a car which insurance had written off - paid the full value for, which was less than the repair cost - as long as you can get third party insurance for it. You would be insured for any damage you caused to others in an accident but not your own repair costs. Some years ago, when it was probably easier, my sister-in-law wrote off a family car (bodywork was too expensive) but it was used again on third party after my f-i-l fixed the dents. Perfectly legal, no fraud implied or inferred.
A car that's wrecked is "totalled" here. From total write-off, meaning not worth fixing in the insurance company's assessment. You can personally get totalled as well, meaning very drunk.
Which leads me to drunk driving. Which is what it's called, or and impaired or .08 (zero eight). "He got a zero eight (an impaired) last night". We see DUI more frequently which I think is the American term.
It amuses me that the term 'drink driving' seems to be current in the UK. I've seen more than a few drunks driving, but am pretty sure I've never yet seen a drink driving.
Something different... "Runs good, never wrecked" is a common phrase in second-hand car adverts in the USA. I had always understood "wrecked" to mean destroyed, (e.g. ship wreck, train wreck) but in the USA it will commonly be taken to mean anything needing a body repair. Perhaps I've been away too long, but is it ever so used in the UK now?
Not in my experience. In the UK, I'd translate that slogan as meaning 'it's never been a write off', i.e. damaged so badly in an accident that it has to be scrapped.
There are always alleged to be cases of cars that are write offs but somehow get reinstated. That's likely to imply some sort of insurance fraud. There was one classic case in the law books of a second hand car that turned out to be the front half of one car welded onto the back half of another.
It is possible to legally drive a car which insurance had written off - paid the full value for, which was less than the repair cost - as long as you can get third party insurance for it. You would be insured for any damage you caused to others in an accident but not your own repair costs. Some years ago, when it was probably easier, my sister-in-law wrote off a family car (bodywork was too expensive) but it was used again on third party after my f-i-l fixed the dents. Perfectly legal, no fraud implied or inferred.
It's perfectly possible to get a written off car repaired, back on the road and insured fully comp. I know because I've got one.
Total loss just means the market value was less than the repair cost plus the salvage value. It doesn't mean irrepairable.
What can happen is that the salvage is bought by someone who repairs it more cheaply than the insurance estimate (e.g. third party parts, local garage rather than main dealer labour rates) and then sells it in the used market. Entirely legal.
Something different... "Runs good, never wrecked" is a common phrase in second-hand car adverts in the USA. I had always understood "wrecked" to mean destroyed, (e.g. ship wreck, train wreck) but in the USA it will commonly be taken to mean anything needing a body repair. Perhaps I've been away too long, but is it ever so used in the UK now?
Not in my experience. In the UK, I'd translate that slogan as meaning 'it's never been a write off', i.e. damaged so badly in an accident that it has to be scrapped.
There are always alleged to be cases of cars that are write offs but somehow get reinstated. That's likely to imply some sort of insurance fraud. There was one classic case in the law books of a second hand car that turned out to be the front half of one car welded onto the back half of another.
It is possible to legally drive a car which insurance had written off - paid the full value for, which was less than the repair cost - as long as you can get third party insurance for it. You would be insured for any damage you caused to others in an accident but not your own repair costs. Some years ago, when it was probably easier, my sister-in-law wrote off a family car (bodywork was too expensive) but it was used again on third party after my f-i-l fixed the dents. Perfectly legal, no fraud implied or inferred.
It's perfectly possible to get a written off car repaired, back on the road and insured fully comp. I know because I've got one.
Total loss just means the market value was less than the repair cost plus the salvage value. It doesn't mean irrepairable.
What can happen is that the salvage is bought by someone who repairs it more cheaply than the insurance estimate (e.g. third party parts, local garage rather than main dealer labour rates) and then sells it in the used market. Entirely legal.
I'm surprised that an insurer will offer fully comp for a vehicle on which it has already paid out the full value, but agreed that its totally legal..
Something different... "Runs good, never wrecked" is a common phrase in second-hand car adverts in the USA. I had always understood "wrecked" to mean destroyed, (e.g. ship wreck, train wreck) but in the USA it will commonly be taken to mean anything needing a body repair. Perhaps I've been away too long, but is it ever so used in the UK now?
Not in my experience. In the UK, I'd translate that slogan as meaning 'it's never been a write off', i.e. damaged so badly in an accident that it has to be scrapped.
There are always alleged to be cases of cars that are write offs but somehow get reinstated. That's likely to imply some sort of insurance fraud. There was one classic case in the law books of a second hand car that turned out to be the front half of one car welded onto the back half of another.
It is possible to legally drive a car which insurance had written off - paid the full value for, which was less than the repair cost - as long as you can get third party insurance for it. You would be insured for any damage you caused to others in an accident but not your own repair costs. Some years ago, when it was probably easier, my sister-in-law wrote off a family car (bodywork was too expensive) but it was used again on third party after my f-i-l fixed the dents. Perfectly legal, no fraud implied or inferred.
It's perfectly possible to get a written off car repaired, back on the road and insured fully comp. I know because I've got one.
Total loss just means the market value was less than the repair cost plus the salvage value. It doesn't mean irrepairable.
What can happen is that the salvage is bought by someone who repairs it more cheaply than the insurance estimate (e.g. third party parts, local garage rather than main dealer labour rates) and then sells it in the used market. Entirely legal.
I'm surprised that an insurer will offer fully comp for a vehicle on which it has already paid out the full value, but agreed that its totally legal..
Well, the car in question wasn't written off when under my ownership, but it makes no odds to the insurance company as long as you're paying an annual premium covering their risk whether the car is one they've already paid out on or an identical one bought to replace it. It's still the same risk for them.
A new question for this thread. One quite often hears in BrEnglish variants of, 'I'm sat on this chair outside a pub when ..... '.
'Was anyone sat outside when you came in?'
This is not grammatically correct, but it's widespread enough to hear people complaining when it's used on the BBC which some expect to be the guardian of all that is good and proper, both in behaviour and grammar.
The correct forms of those particular samples would have been, I am/was sitting ...
Was there anyone sitting... ?
Less frequent but quite widespread is the same construction with 'stood'.
Are these usages found at all in the US? My suspicion is that they are not.
A new question for this thread. One quite often hears in BrEnglish variants of, 'I'm sat on this chair outside a pub when ..... '.
'Was anyone sat outside when you came in?'
This is not grammatically correct, but it's widespread enough to hear people complaining when it's used on the BBC which some expect to be the guardian of all that is good and proper, both in behaviour and grammar.
The correct forms of those particular samples would have been, I am/was sitting ...
Was there anyone sitting... ?
Less frequent but quite widespread is the same construction with 'stood'.
Are these usages found at all in the US? My suspicion is that they are not.
The construction that infuriates me is "sits" referring to a building. "The church sits on the corner of the High Street and Blank Lane." I scream at the TV - "It stands! A building STANDS!"
And the location of, say, a village: "Little Dribbling sits in a bend of the River Thames in Oxfordshire". No, it doesn't. It "LIES".
A new question for this thread. One quite often hears in BrEnglish variants of, 'I'm sat on this chair outside a pub when ..... '.
'Was anyone sat outside when you came in?'
This is not grammatically correct, but it's widespread enough to hear people complaining when it's used on the BBC which some expect to be the guardian of all that is good and proper, both in behaviour and grammar.
The correct forms of those particular samples would have been, I am/was sitting ...
Was there anyone sitting... ?
Less frequent but quite widespread is the same construction with 'stood'.
Are these usages found at all in the US? My suspicion is that they are not.
They are perfectly grammatically correct. A past participle such as 'sat' can be grammatically considered an adjective describing a current state:
The telly is broken
The telly is stood on the telly stand
The cat is dead
The cat is sat on the mat
I think you're saying "grammatically incorrect" when you mean "not part of the prestige dialect".
It is however at least as common as the present participle in the dialect where I live. In fact, there can even be a nuanced semantic difference; "I was sitting there" is a simple statement of fact; "I was sat there when the phone rang" indicates a state that was already in force from the point in time the speaker is narrating.
AFAIK the usage "I was sat on the chair" does not exist in the U.S. As for grammatically correct, that is surely a function of local rules. Everywhere I've lived in the U.S., "It was stood outside" would get you funny looks and a mark-down on your essay, if included. The proper construction here would be "was standing."
AFAIK the usage "I was sat on the chair" does not exist in the U.S. As for grammatically correct, that is surely a function of local rules. Everywhere I've lived in the U.S., "It was stood outside" would get you funny looks and a mark-down on your essay, if included. The proper construction here would be "was standing."
Both can be correct. At to the first, you're referring to how people at an event had been arranged, and the arrangement for you were that you were sat outside rather than standing inside. In the second, a lamp was stood outside to show people the path.
The cat it's sitting on the mat.
That man he's driving too fast.
Fred you what are you doing?
-- not unusual.
@NOprophet_NØprofit those aren't examples of what I was asking about, which makes me think what I was asking about isn't found in the rest of Canada apart from Newfoundland at all.
They're OK as dialogue. I suppose strictly, if you were writing them down they would be,
The cat, it's sitting on the mat.
That man, he's driving too fast.
Fred, you, what are you doing?
What @Trudy has described fits with what I'm asking about perfectly.
AFAIK the usage "I was sat on the chair" does not exist in the U.S. As for grammatically correct, that is surely a function of local rules. Everywhere I've lived in the U.S., "It was stood outside" would get you funny looks and a mark-down on your essay, if included. The proper construction here would be "was standing."
Both can be correct. At to the first, you're referring to how people at an event had been arranged, and the arrangement for you were that you were sat outside rather than standing inside. In the second, a lamp was stood outside to show people the path.
Fine, but are you speaking from a U.S. context? Because if you are, I'd be fascinated to know where in the U.S. this is actually correct.
I accept that it is correct in the U.K.
ETA: In your first example of arrangement, U.S. usage requires "set" (meaning "to be placed in a position by someone else").
The point I'm making is that despite @KarlLB's protestations, and whatever he may say, in the UK the usage is pretty widespread, but is either dialect or regarded as not quite OK as standard English. Perhaps teachers and editors are more indulgent these days but I'm fairly sure it's not normally OK in written BrEnglish.
It's possible, but I'm not sure about this, that it may be more prevalent in some parts of the country than others.
The question I was asking was whether the usage exists at all elsewhere. The impression I've got from peoples' comments is that it's unknown in North America apart from Newfoundland, where the situation is much as in the UK.
Am I right on that?
I'm not clear from @Gee D's comments whether it's found in Australia or not. From his examples, I'm wondering if it would mean there that one had been put on a chair in a particular place specifically by someone else, such as the organiser of the meeting. That would also fit his lamp example.
Can anyone comment from anywhere else in the Anglosphere?
You ought to know by now I don't give a fig what prescriptive grammarians think. It's not their language; it's everyone's. They need to stick to writing style guides where they can dictate what varieties of language they arbitrarily approve of and which they don't, and stop thinking that they're doing linguistics.
If you study whales, and you write a book on what whales should be like, and you then discover that lots of whales aren't how you described them, is it the whales who are wrong or the book? Prescriptive grammarians are basically saying the equivalent of the whales being the ones who have got it wrong.
I don't take issue with asking whether the usage is current in other English speaking areas. I do take issue with the idea that it's somehow inherently "wrong", as if rules of English grammar are given from on high, rather than deduced from observation of the actual language as it is actually used by its speakers.
I'm not clear from @Gee D's comments whether it's found in Australia or not. From his examples, I'm wondering if it would mean there that one had been put on a chair in a particular place specifically by someone else, such as the organiser of the meeting. That would also fit his lamp example.
Pretty much as you set out - I am a second-ranker at a meeting and so I'm not sat in the front rows, but the organiser has placed me some distance back. You could also say seated. Does that help you also Lamb Chopped?
I'm not clear from @Gee D's comments whether it's found in Australia or not. From his examples, I'm wondering if it would mean there that one had been put on a chair in a particular place specifically by someone else, such as the organiser of the meeting. That would also fit his lamp example.
Pretty much as you set out - I am a second-ranker at a meeting and so I'm not sat in the front rows, but the organiser has placed me some distance back. You could also say seated. Does that help you also Lamb Chopped?
Ugh. No. Look, the verb in the U.S. for "to be placed on a chair (or elsewhere) by a third party) is "to be set." It is NOT "to be sat." You may not (in the U.S.) say, "I was sat on a chair" unless you want to reveal the fact that you speak some other flavor of English than U.S. You may say "I was seated on a chair" or "I sat on a chair" or even (shudder) "I sat myself on a chair", but never, no never, may you say "I was sat/ He was sat / They were sat." "Sat" never takes a "to be" verb in front of it that way. It just doesn't. Not here.
We'd say brilliant. But I understand that brilliant means awesome in the UK not smart.
It can mean smart. Can smart mean well and fairly formally dressed in Canada the way it does in the UK? That use doesn't seem common in the US: I hear "sharp" here in places where I'd expect "smart" in the UK.
I'm not clear from @Gee D's comments whether it's found in Australia or not. From his examples, I'm wondering if it would mean there that one had been put on a chair in a particular place specifically by someone else, such as the organiser of the meeting. That would also fit his lamp example.
Pretty much as you set out - I am a second-ranker at a meeting and so I'm not sat in the front rows, but the organiser has placed me some distance back. You could also say seated. Does that help you also Lamb Chopped?
Ugh. No. Look, the verb in the U.S. for "to be placed on a chair (or elsewhere) by a third party) is "to be set." It is NOT "to be sat." You may not (in the U.S.) say, "I was sat on a chair" unless you want to reveal the fact that you speak some other flavor of English than U.S. You may say "I was seated on a chair" or "I sat on a chair" or even (shudder) "I sat myself on a chair", but never, no never, may you say "I was sat/ He was sat / They were sat." "Sat" never takes a "to be" verb in front of it that way. It just doesn't. Not here.
But it is used in that manner here. I'd also spell in "flavour" and my computer has a red line under your "flavor". Here, we do speak a different English to that in the US. I'm not sure why that gets you all hot under the collar, as your last post certainly shows you.
Are these usages found at all in the US? My suspicion is that they are not.
My answer has been "No" each time because I'm answering the damned original question (only to be "corrected" every single fucking time). No, these usages are not found at all in the U.S. At which point various people keep brightly chiming in to correct me: "Oh, but they ARE found here" (for values of "here" never specified) and occasionally condescending to point out to me that these usages are in fact correct (apparently in all times and in all places) because [mutter mutter participles used as adjectives].
It's like nobody even reads the thread anymore. (Yeah, I know, dumbass me for assuming they did) Do whatever the fuck you like in the U.K. But allow me to answer Enoch's question, will you?
I'm not correcting you, but rather setting out usage here - the thread is not as limited as you suggest, but has taken twists and turns as it often has in the past. It's the nature of Ship threads to divert from time to time. Currents, the wind, and waves change.
I'm not correcting you, but rather setting out usage here - the thread is not as limited as you suggest, but has taken twists and turns as it often has in the past. It's the nature of Ship threads to divert from time to time. Currents, the wind, and waves change.
BTW, I am not in the UK.
But to be fair, it can be difficult to remember where “here” is for every shipmate. I know you’re Australian, but it’s easy enough to imagine that others might not know or remember that, which is why it can be helpful to be clear about where “here” is rather than assuming everyone knows.
Bex is a now discontinued compound analgesic powder once widely used in Oz as a panacea for headache and a constellation of other symptoms. The ad “ a cup of tea, a Bex and a good lie down” was well known on billboards and on the radio from at least the 1950s to the 1970s. The Bex factory was in Surry Hills ( an inner Sydney suburb) for many years and the ladies who worked there were given free access to powders to keep them
pepped up at work( caffeine was an ingredient). Kidney failure was a common complication of long term use; as a student in the 70sI recall many a Mavis, Doris and Beryl with “Bexy kidneys” on the dialysis waiting list.
Bex is a now discontinued compound analgesic powder once widely used in Oz as a panacea for headache and a constellation of other symptoms. The ad “ a cup of tea, a Bex and a good lie down” was well known on billboards and on the radio from at least the 1950s to the 1970s. The Bex factory was in Surry Hills ( an inner Sydney suburb) for many years and the ladies who worked there were given free access to powders to keep them
pepped up at work( caffeine was an ingredient). Kidney failure was a common complication of long term use; as a student in the 70sI recall many a Mavis, Doris and Beryl with “Bexy kidneys” on the dialysis waiting list.
From memory, the ingredients were aspirin, phenacitin (spelling?) and caffeine. The phrase "a cup of tea, a Bex and a good lie down" also formed the title of a review in a mid-city theatre in the late 50's. I can remember my mother and aunts going to see it with a group of the Girls, to use the then description. Its rival was Vincents APC, which was seen as upmarket (for what that was worth). I can't remember where Vincents was made.
Just had a look around the web: the firm Nicholas & Co manufactured Vincents powders & their factory was in South Melbourne.
Just a bit of Antipodean trivia to remind us all that the use of English as she is spoke isn’t exclusive to the British Isles and that part of North America known as the US of A😜
Comments
I am having a hard time hearing a water asking "Are you people ready for drinks?" Maybe it will come to this. I see no indication of it at the moment. And a white person addressing a table full of black people as "you people"? Yeah, THAT's a good idea.
No drinks for you.
I most often hear "is everyone ready to order" if for some odd reason the waiter doesn't think "are you ready to order" is sufficiently clear. If the waiter is particularly obnoxious, it will be "are we ready?" - I hadn't actually intended to have dinner with the waiter.
I think I have been addressed as "you guys" by a waiter in a restaurant, but it's only happened occasionally.
There are always alleged to be cases of cars that are write offs but somehow get reinstated. That's likely to imply some sort of insurance fraud. There was one classic case in the law books of a second hand car that turned out to be the front half of one car welded onto the back half of another.
'Runs good' isn't really a comfortable usage here either. We'd tend to say a 'good runner' or 'runs well'.
Another phrase heard is hurricane-prone areas is "No Water Damage," This means the vehicle has not been underwater which can ruin a drive train (engine, transmission, and wheels). However, having gone through one hurricane, I can testify to how heavy rain can get into the interior of an enclosed vehicle and cause damage to the carpet, the upholstery and the electrical system too,
Which leads me to drunk driving. Which is what it's called, or and impaired or .08 (zero eight). "He got a zero eight (an impaired) last night". We see DUI more frequently which I think is the American term.
It is possible to legally drive a car which insurance had written off - paid the full value for, which was less than the repair cost - as long as you can get third party insurance for it. You would be insured for any damage you caused to others in an accident but not your own repair costs. Some years ago, when it was probably easier, my sister-in-law wrote off a family car (bodywork was too expensive) but it was used again on third party after my f-i-l fixed the dents. Perfectly legal, no fraud implied or inferred.
It amuses me that the term 'drink driving' seems to be current in the UK. I've seen more than a few drunks driving, but am pretty sure I've never yet seen a drink driving.
Meanwhile, what @Lamb Chopped said about the meaning of “wreck” in the US.
It's perfectly possible to get a written off car repaired, back on the road and insured fully comp. I know because I've got one.
Total loss just means the market value was less than the repair cost plus the salvage value. It doesn't mean irrepairable.
What can happen is that the salvage is bought by someone who repairs it more cheaply than the insurance estimate (e.g. third party parts, local garage rather than main dealer labour rates) and then sells it in the used market. Entirely legal.
I'm surprised that an insurer will offer fully comp for a vehicle on which it has already paid out the full value, but agreed that its totally legal..
Well, the car in question wasn't written off when under my ownership, but it makes no odds to the insurance company as long as you're paying an annual premium covering their risk whether the car is one they've already paid out on or an identical one bought to replace it. It's still the same risk for them.
'I'm sat on this chair outside a pub when ..... '.
'Was anyone sat outside when you came in?'
This is not grammatically correct, but it's widespread enough to hear people complaining when it's used on the BBC which some expect to be the guardian of all that is good and proper, both in behaviour and grammar.
The correct forms of those particular samples would have been,
I am/was sitting ...
Was there anyone sitting... ?
Less frequent but quite widespread is the same construction with 'stood'.
Are these usages found at all in the US? My suspicion is that they are not.
The construction that infuriates me is "sits" referring to a building. "The church sits on the corner of the High Street and Blank Lane." I scream at the TV - "It stands! A building STANDS!"
And the location of, say, a village: "Little Dribbling sits in a bend of the River Thames in Oxfordshire". No, it doesn't. It "LIES".
They are perfectly grammatically correct. A past participle such as 'sat' can be grammatically considered an adjective describing a current state:
The telly is broken
The telly is stood on the telly stand
The cat is dead
The cat is sat on the mat
I think you're saying "grammatically incorrect" when you mean "not part of the prestige dialect".
It is however at least as common as the present participle in the dialect where I live. In fact, there can even be a nuanced semantic difference; "I was sitting there" is a simple statement of fact; "I was sat there when the phone rang" indicates a state that was already in force from the point in time the speaker is narrating.
That man he's driving too fast.
Fred you what are you doing?
-- not unusual.
Both can be correct. At to the first, you're referring to how people at an event had been arranged, and the arrangement for you were that you were sat outside rather than standing inside. In the second, a lamp was stood outside to show people the path.
They're OK as dialogue. I suppose strictly, if you were writing them down they would be,
What @Trudy has described fits with what I'm asking about perfectly.
Fine, but are you speaking from a U.S. context? Because if you are, I'd be fascinated to know where in the U.S. this is actually correct.
I accept that it is correct in the U.K.
ETA: In your first example of arrangement, U.S. usage requires "set" (meaning "to be placed in a position by someone else").
Accepted by whom? Who gets to decide? Why are they an authority?
It's definitely accepted around here because lots of people use it.
It's possible, but I'm not sure about this, that it may be more prevalent in some parts of the country than others.
The question I was asking was whether the usage exists at all elsewhere. The impression I've got from peoples' comments is that it's unknown in North America apart from Newfoundland, where the situation is much as in the UK.
Am I right on that?
I'm not clear from @Gee D's comments whether it's found in Australia or not. From his examples, I'm wondering if it would mean there that one had been put on a chair in a particular place specifically by someone else, such as the organiser of the meeting. That would also fit his lamp example.
Can anyone comment from anywhere else in the Anglosphere?
If you study whales, and you write a book on what whales should be like, and you then discover that lots of whales aren't how you described them, is it the whales who are wrong or the book? Prescriptive grammarians are basically saying the equivalent of the whales being the ones who have got it wrong.
I don't take issue with asking whether the usage is current in other English speaking areas. I do take issue with the idea that it's somehow inherently "wrong", as if rules of English grammar are given from on high, rather than deduced from observation of the actual language as it is actually used by its speakers.
Pretty much as you set out - I am a second-ranker at a meeting and so I'm not sat in the front rows, but the organiser has placed me some distance back. You could also say seated. Does that help you also Lamb Chopped?
We'd say brilliant. But I understand that brilliant means awesome in the UK not smart.
Ugh. No. Look, the verb in the U.S. for "to be placed on a chair (or elsewhere) by a third party) is "to be set." It is NOT "to be sat." You may not (in the U.S.) say, "I was sat on a chair" unless you want to reveal the fact that you speak some other flavor of English than U.S. You may say "I was seated on a chair" or "I sat on a chair" or even (shudder) "I sat myself on a chair", but never, no never, may you say "I was sat/ He was sat / They were sat." "Sat" never takes a "to be" verb in front of it that way. It just doesn't. Not here.
It can mean smart. Can smart mean well and fairly formally dressed in Canada the way it does in the UK? That use doesn't seem common in the US: I hear "sharp" here in places where I'd expect "smart" in the UK.
But it is used in that manner here. I'd also spell in "flavour" and my computer has a red line under your "flavor". Here, we do speak a different English to that in the US. I'm not sure why that gets you all hot under the collar, as your last post certainly shows you.
My answer has been "No" each time because I'm answering the damned original question (only to be "corrected" every single fucking time). No, these usages are not found at all in the U.S. At which point various people keep brightly chiming in to correct me: "Oh, but they ARE found here" (for values of "here" never specified) and occasionally condescending to point out to me that these usages are in fact correct (apparently in all times and in all places) because [mutter mutter participles used as adjectives].
It's like nobody even reads the thread anymore. (Yeah, I know, dumbass me for assuming they did) Do whatever the fuck you like in the U.K. But allow me to answer Enoch's question, will you?
I'm not correcting you, but rather setting out usage here - the thread is not as limited as you suggest, but has taken twists and turns as it often has in the past. It's the nature of Ship threads to divert from time to time. Currents, the wind, and waves change.
BTW, I am not in the UK.
Meanwhile, a Bex?
Bex is a now discontinued compound analgesic powder once widely used in Oz as a panacea for headache and a constellation of other symptoms. The ad “ a cup of tea, a Bex and a good lie down” was well known on billboards and on the radio from at least the 1950s to the 1970s. The Bex factory was in Surry Hills ( an inner Sydney suburb) for many years and the ladies who worked there were given free access to powders to keep them
pepped up at work( caffeine was an ingredient). Kidney failure was a common complication of long term use; as a student in the 70sI recall many a Mavis, Doris and Beryl with “Bexy kidneys” on the dialysis waiting list.
From memory, the ingredients were aspirin, phenacitin (spelling?) and caffeine. The phrase "a cup of tea, a Bex and a good lie down" also formed the title of a review in a mid-city theatre in the late 50's. I can remember my mother and aunts going to see it with a group of the Girls, to use the then description. Its rival was Vincents APC, which was seen as upmarket (for what that was worth). I can't remember where Vincents was made.
Just a bit of Antipodean trivia to remind us all that the use of English as she is spoke isn’t exclusive to the British Isles and that part of North America known as the US of A😜