trotsky said:

"I was overseeing the project."

"I performed an oversight on the project."

Example #2 is that of bad writing. Quit being a fool.


You're right about your silly "example #2", but that doesn't help
your main point. In fact, if you rewrote it in normal language, i.e.
"I performed oversight on the project", it is both standard and
easily understood by any speaker of English.


Can you give me an example in anything written is say, the last forty
years?

You mean like in a novel, or an encyclopedia?

Why do you simply reject my own experiences out of hand? I stated a
fact: "oversight" is used commonly to have the meaning from the
dictionary. That is a fact. If you don't recognize it, isn't it
simply because your experience doesn't coincide with mine? Isn't
that at least possible?


This is the problem: there are dictionary definitions, and then
there is common usage.

That is exactly so. Your "common usage" excludes truly common
phrases. How do you explain that? Not to mention your favorite
"n- - - - r pile", which neither I nor, apparently, any other RAO
regulars had ever heard until you presented it here. You
characterized it as "common usage" too, yet none of us had ever
heard of it. Comments?


Writing that is interesting in the here and now
pays close attention to the common usage. I don't suppose I'm telling
you anything you don't already know.

You're repeating something I do know -- that you are unable or
unwilling to grant that your own experience in language usage is not
all-inclusive. I've proven that you don't have the all-encompassing
experience you believe you have. I did that simply by citing a fact
whose reality you persist in denying. Yet you refuse to reconsider,
to re-evaluate, to retrench in any way, shape, or form. What does
that say about you?


On a related note, do you think Bob has shown himself adept with the
language?

Largely, yes. At least compared to the general wash of Usenet. Far
more adept than Krooger or Nousiane, for example.