Hi porsche, I'm still not so sure. I totally agree that all the sentences you've given are unambiguous, but they're all the results of our interpretation of the original sentence. OK, as sbee then asks if it should be 'my', he does make it clear, but if we take the original sentence as it stands without that remark, then I still think it is unclear. I thinkl that's what I meant.

Mine means something like 'my one(s)' so I think the sentence as it stands can be read two ways:

Either it's a mistaken version of - “I so appreciate you taking my and Gregg’s child to school today.” - therefore one child

Or it could be read: “I so appreciate you taking my one (i.e. my child) and Gregg’s child to school today.” - therefore two children

This is the definition of 'misnomer' at Oxford Online Dictionaries:
1. a wrong or inaccurate name or designation - ‘King crab’ is a misnomer—these creatures are not crustaceans at all
2. a wrong or inaccurate use of a name or term - to call this ‘neighbourhood policing’ would be a misnomer" -

No 2 sounds pretty like your example to me.

The American Heritage Dictionary (via The Free Dictionary) lists:
1. An error in naming a person or place.
2.a. Application of a wrong name.
b. A name wrongly or unsuitably applied to a person or an object.

And I would have though 2b here covers it.

Here are some more example sentences. Macmillan:
- Cottage is perhaps a misnomer for such a large house.
- 'Lucky' seemed a bit of misnomer for the unfortunate little dog.

Merriam-Webster:
- “International Airport” is something of a misnomer, since almost all the arriving and departing flights are local.

Actually I think you're both right. You didn't actually say what your girlfriend thought misnomer meant, but I imagine she was probably thinking of the first meaning in the Oxford and American Heritage dictionaries, but that's not its only meaning. And it can certainly also be said that it is a misconception that blues music is 'simple music'; just that you're thinking of the words themselves while she's thinking more about the idea. Time to kiss and make up, methinks.

@WW - I hate to say it, but I misread some of those graphs - in fact optimize with a z was the clear winner from the start. With the older -ise/-ize words, -ise seems to have been dominant between the 1870s and the 1920s, with -ize taking the lead again after that.

@LG - being facetious, on that basis there is no plural of MOUSE, as equipment is uncountable and has no plural. So if you want to buy one, you should really ask for a piece of MOUSE. Incidentally, some people way back near the beginning of the discussion nearly got there, but equipment is not plural, it's uncountable (or non-count).

However the idea that MOUSE is an acronym seems to have come along a decade or so after the mouse was given it's name, and the inventor really was thinking of the animal, so it's probably best just to do what the dictionaries do and accept both mice and mouses. Personally I go for mice.

You're quite right, Kingsley, reder and redest are not acceptable under the rules that guide the English language, but redder and reddest are. As for reddish, meaning fairly red or somewhat red, can you be more or most fairly or somewhat anything I wonder?

A propos of 'verbing', you may have heard of the game 'buzzword bingo', there is even an app for it. Well, Stan Carey at Sentence First, has produced a 'Usage Peeve Bingo' card, with all the old favourites - verbing, whom, singular they, the position of only (as in - He only died last week), over = more than, etc.

http://stancarey.wordpress.com/2013/01/16/usage-peeve-bingo/

@HS - if you're ever back this way, this graph from Ngram should make you happy:
http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=get+in+contact%2Cget+in+touch%2Ckeep+in+contact%2Ckeep+in+touch&year_start=1860&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=

@Alison - how on earth can 'ex' be a vowel sound? - If anything it's a vowel plus a double consonant sound - 'eks'. Are 'es' and 'is' also vowel sounds? Why should 'ext' in 'text' be treated any differently to 'est' in 'test / tested' or 'ist' in 'list / listed'? Sorry, that's a lot of questions, but I'm genuinely puzzled. And has already been said, new verbs (if it is indeed new) are invariably regular, and all the dictionaries I've looked at list 'text' as a regular verb:

- I texted her to arrange a time to meet. (Cambridge)
- If she was going to go she would have texted us. (Oxford)
- I texted her a little while ago. (Merriam-Webster)
- She texted me when she arrived. (American Heritage Dictionary - via The Free Dictionary)

Personally, I can't see one single linguistic reason why 'text' should be anything but regular.

I've just read the question again, and realised I'd misread this thread the first time, assuming that someone was objecting to impact as a verb, as some people do nowadays. I'd never heard of anybody objecting the other way.

I do think his topic shows beautifully how silly these arguments are. Until recently many of us have only known 'impact' as a noun and so some see its use as a verb as some sort of '"ghastly verbification". Now it turns out that its existence as a verb is nearly two hundred years older than that as a noun.

Apparently, forty years or so ago, criticism was mainly directed at the noun, not for its existence as such, but for its figurative use, which we probably take for granted nowadays, but which so offended joshelson (but that was back in 2006). Impact, action etc as verbs don't bother me much, but I have to confess I don't much care for the -ise/ize family, verbs like prioritise, incentivise etc. In a generation or so, however, they'll no doubt be wondering what all the fuss was about.

MWDEU - http://books.google.com/books?id=2yJusP0vrdgC&pg=PA526

Actually, the original function of the apostrophe was to show a missing vowel, a use we still see today in contractions - 'I'm, he's, she'd' etc. As far as I understand, the reason that it is used for possessives is because it signals a missing e which used to be in the Old English genitive form, which ended in -es.