writing is sorrow; having had written is sublime
It is the ongoing global war of misinformation that, long term, I am beginning to fear most.
The damage that has been done by it just from weaponizing social media sites alone is incomprehensible to me.
And yet, for the most part, this phase of the global misinformation war is being executed by slow-moving, mistake-prone, carbon-based humans…
When AI is fully engaged in the battle…
Oh boy*…
That’s when, I reckon fearfully, the doomsday clock strikes T-minus kaboom.
According to the ONLINE ETYMOLOGY DICTIONARY**, the etymological “definition” of the indefinite article “a” is:
a form of an used before consonants, mid-12c., a weakened form of Old English an “one” (see an). The disappearance of the -n- before consonants was mostly complete by mid-14c. After c. 1600 the -n- also began to vanish before words beginning with a sounded -h-; it still is retained by many writers before unaccented syllables in h- or (e)u- but is now no longer normally spoken as such. The -n- also lingered (especially in southern England dialect) before -w- and -y- through 15c.
It also is used before nouns of singular number and a few plural nouns when few or great many is interposed.
For reasons unclear, I wondered all of a sudden how that much overworked and under-appreciated word “a” came about…