Off Topic Mug Shots, Santa needs to do a head count.. :)

Fair play, mate. It does seem explosive

 

I'm one of the least sensitive posters on here. Just about everything is fair game with me.

Not people's Mothers, though

 

obviously you can if Publically and Publicly are both valid

More relevant question is, is there anything you can't fix with a ban hammer?

 

*You're*

 

I missed that one, touche

 

It's done, no point dwelling on it...Don't think i actually believed they got his FB stuff from the band link or i didn't want to believe that's what they did. What i do know now as a lesson learned, if any one has given Piskie anything since then it's already done the rounds, so that's @CBD saffy fooked

 

I do actually know that one, that's my brain being lazy and not paying attention to detail on a footie forum

 

meanwhile at PISKIE HQ, some new PMs are being disseminated

please log in to view this image

 

“Publicly” and “publically”
From time to time I see “publically” in copy. I’ve even caught myself typing it once or twice. It’s widely regarded as a mistake (although some dictionaries now list it as a variant spelling).

But the approved spelling, “publicly”, is a unique oddity. It’s the only adverb ending in “–icly” formed from an adjective that ends in “–ic”. Compare:

• hectic – hectically
• tragic – tragically
• archaic – archaically
• cryptic – cryptically
• idiotic – idiotically

And so on. But “public” alone bucks the trend to become “publicly”.

At least, it does most of the time. In the GloWbE corpus (a record of language used on web pages archived in 2012), “publically” is about 6% as common as “publicly”. In the Google Books records, it’s below 1%.

People who write “publically” – whether through momentary carelessness or because they think that’s how it’s spelt – may be mistaken but they’re not stupid. They’re promoting regularity in the language. They’re like children who say “runned” and “buyed” and “bringed” because they’ve worked out the rule for forming past-tense verbs but haven’t realised that there are exceptions.

We get taught about these exceptions, though: there are over 100 irregular verbs, most well-known. But there’s only one “publicly”, so people are less aware of it as an issue and it appears in adult usage far more than over-regularised verbs.

I don’t know why “publicly” is unique, but notes that several adjectives have both “–ic” and “–ical” forms. Some of these pairs have pretty much the same meaning:

• botanic/botanical
• geometric/geometrical
• monarchic/monarchical
• poetic/poetical
• rhythmic/rhythmical

Some are subtly different in meaning:

• comic/comical
• electric/electrical
• lyric/lyrical

Others are more significantly different:

• economic/economical
• historic/historical
• politic/political

The parity of adjectives in -ic and -ical helps to explain why the adverbs for both types end in -ically. So, for example, the adverbs for organic and tragic are organically and tragically. Even though the -ical forms of the adjectives have long since disappeared, their ghosts appear in the adverbs. The effect is there even for adjectives which never had a counterpart ending in -ical. So barbaric, basic, civic, drastic and others become barbarically, basically etc., and it’s as if -ally is the adverbial ending for them. This has become the general rule for all adjectives ending in -ic except public, whose adverb is still normally publicly.​

This is interesting, but it doesn’t tell us why the adverb forms settled as “–ically” rather than “–icly”.

So I looked at the OED historical citations for the 16 bullet-pointed examples above, and found that for 12 of them, the “–ical” form of the adjective pre-dated the “–ic”. This kind of suggests that, if these pairs were interchangeable at the time (1400s–1600s in most of these cases), the “–ical” forms may have been better established and so had a dominant position when it came to forming adverbs. Hence the “–ically” convention.
Maybe.

But this doesn’t tell us why “publicly” now stands alone. It did appear earlier than most of the other adverbs above; the OED’s first “public” is in 1394 and “publicly” 1534. So maybe it had managed to dig in by the time the “–ically” convention was blossoming? The OED has a couple of “publical”s (one in 1450, one in 1898) but they’re clearly rogue; “public” has always been the only accepted form of the adjective, and this fact may have pushed people towards “publicly”. (“Publically” doesn’t appear until 1797.)

A scrap of support for this theory comes from the fact that “publicly” hasn’t always stood alone. The now-dead “franticly”, which Peters mentions, used to be common. The OED’s first “frantic” was in 1390, “franticly” in 1549 and “frantically” in 1749; it has no record of “frantical”. The situation is very like that of “public” and its derivatives, except that “publicly” has managed to survive regularisation.

So far, at least.

 

Think i'm off the hook

 

I've said nowt to, Piskie. Only you and two others...

 

Two others

 

I have unless they've went blabbing. I highly doubt that, though.

 

Maybe

please log in to view this image

 

Yeah, but you tell two people, they then tell two other people....Piskie then finds out and gives someone a key to another bike and...

please log in to view this image

 

I trust you 3 lads. I don't expect it to get out. There's no need, in hindsight, I regret it and all info has been binned.

Mind you, that doxxing lead to more doxxing

 

Trust but verify

 

I don't want to know

 

Nobody will. That was just for my entertainment

 

Huh