To me, cum (pronounced 'kūm) is a Latin conjunction meaning "with" or "and." For instance, magna cum laude means "with high praise" and office cum library is another way of saying "office/library."
Cum used as another word for orgasm or semen was something I only saw in poorly written free fiction. In my opinion, come is the correct spelling for both verb and noun. However, this topic was brought up in an on-line author group and apparently cum as both verb and noun is acceptable for some publishing houses.
Color me scandalized!
I had published authors telling me they used cum and cumming in their writings ALL THE TIME! And their editors accepted it!
Now, I can go on and on about why I believe this is wrong, but I have insufficient time to rant properly.
So, here's the question I posed to these authors: What's the past tense of cum?
Their answer: came.
Not cumed or cummed but came.
So, uh, shouldn't the present tense be come?
(Yes, I'm anal retentive. Did you catch my rant about ménage? How about the rant about poor research? And the one about TSTL heroines?)
Showing posts with label Language. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Language. Show all posts
Thursday, March 13, 2008
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