For the second time, Scathing Online Schoolmarm has caught someone using exuberant when they mean exorbitant. The first one was
Rehoboth Beach is Delaware’s most overrated destination mainly due to the cost of parking and its exuberant enforcement of parking meters.
I think the writer probably had excessive in mind along with exorbitant. Whatever.
And there’s this.
Ball told him that was “a felony,” but she wouldn’t report it. She just kept prescribing him exuberant amounts of oxycodone.
March 21st, 2024 at 1:04PM
“Exuberant” denoting joy and pleasure fits for the act of enforcement that must bring fees to a city. A fee can be exorbitant but exorbitant enforcement doesn’t make sense.
“someone using exuberant when they mean exorbitant.”
Shouldn’t it be “he” or “she”, not “they”?
March 21st, 2024 at 1:21PM
Dmitry: ‘They’ has long been the gender-neutral way to go… But if you really want to get into it…
March 21st, 2024 at 2:07PM
I concur with Dmitry, although the sentence in question is ill-composed. Try “Rehoboth, where the parking rates are exorbitant, and the enforcers are exuberant.”
March 21st, 2024 at 8:57PM
@StephenKarlson: Marvelous construction!
@MargaretSoltan: Interesting Wiki article. I was not aware. Early on I was given “To each his [her] own” as an example of correct usage and told “To each their own” was improper.