Quote:
Originally Posted by Quexos
What do you guys make of this line:
The epic battle between Apple and Google is ALL BUT over. Who won ?
It's the title of a thread here on MR
My interpretation is that it can be a lot of things EXCEPT over ..
So the ensuing question makes no sense "who won ?"
I am tempted to answer: If it's all but over then how should we know who won ?
Wait till it is indeed fully over to find out.
Am I turning into a grammar nazi ? 
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=213447 |
It's the contextual difference between the meaning of the words "
all" and "
everything" that causes confusion here I think. A dictionary might tell you these words mean more or less the same, but in this context they mean more or less the opposite of each other. Thats the problem with dictionaries - they can lead you to believe that words have fixed definite meanings.If the sentence had read "The battle...is
everything but over", then your interpretation would have been right, but in the context in which it appears the conjuction "all but" is more likely to mean something like, "to a large extent" or "as near as damn it".