Re: To waffle, ‘to waver, to vacillate, to equivocate, to dither’

On 2024-04-25 07:19, jerryfriedman wrote:

Aidan Kehoe wrote:
 

Speaking (in sci.lang) of Andy Grove, he uses waffle in the above sense in his
good, well-edited ‘High Output Management.’ In my youth I would only have used
or understood the word in the meaning ‘to ramble on, to say nothing of much
consequence,’ and OED2 documents that the fail-to-make-a-decision sense is
colloquial or non-standard.

 

I presume I have misunderstood various Americans over the years in not picking
up on the ‘dither’ meaning. How universal is that meaning over there?

 I'd say it's the normal meaning over here.
 By the way, Steve isn't the only participant in a.u.e. who doesn't
notice Subject lines.  I don't know how that happens, but it does.

I notice them, usually, but the "above' in the body makes me look for something in the body, not in the subject.
--
"So, what are you going to be doing this Millennium?"
"Not much - I'm going to be dead for most of it..."