Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Improper Use Of The Woodshed

Looking at today's ESPN.com scoreboard, I couldn't help but notice this over on the right-hand side, clearly written by an intern copy editor:

"Woodshed" is of course a noun. It can be used as a verb, but not in the manner used on espn.com. As a verb, "to woodshed" is a slang term meaning "to practice a musical instrument assiduously and with a specific goal in mind ("He's woodshedding for next week's show." Since the Dodgers clearly aren't practicing the Giants assiduously--though Wednesday's game indeed looked like batting practice at times--we have no choice but to call out ESPN.com on its improper grammar (and even a slang word, at that). Hrumph.

For those of you able to look past the poor grammar and third-grade humor pun on Cain and Abel (bet no one has used that one before!), you can at least take solace in the fact that the Dodgers have a 60% chance at victory today, scoring 4.3 runs.

4 comments:

QuadSevens said...

60% seems low after the 11-1 beat down the Dodgers unleashed on Monday.

patm14 said...

I think its funny that Matt Cain has the highest home run prediction rate out of everyone in the Giants line up.

Steve Sax said...

Cain's HR prediction factor beats all the Dodgers, too, save Manny. Nice call, patm14.

Felix Pardalis said...

"woodshed" also has a verb meaning of "roughly punish" from the sense of "boy, I'm a gonna take you to the woodshed and tan yer hide!"