On another Website, I have the injunction (especially to parents), "Thou shalt not attibute." I was thinking of the frequently heard complaint, "You're a bad boy!" or "You're a bad girl!" (Or cat or dog.) Implicitly, we are attributing an inner spirit of badness to a child (or animal). The adjective is just one step away from the substantivity of the noun: it is quasi-substantive.

You may object, "I didn't mean that." But this isn't the UN where some sessions provide immediate translation. (And kids and dogs and cats don't have earphones for listening to the translation.)

Besides, an alternative has long existed in our language: "You're badding!" (You can also say to a child or teener, "You're gooding!".) Use a gerund instead of a quasi-substantive.

At this Website, in the file, "Ignored Language Abuses", I quote, on this subject, the great French mathematician and science-writer, Henri Poincaré (1854-1912), who appeared at that Exposition attended by Judy Garland and her family in the 1954 film, Meet Me in St. Louis, and stated the Principle of Relatiovity one year before Albert Einstein. In his science writings, Poincaré noted that. because heat is labeled by a substantive, scientists long futilely looked for a substance to explain it. (Once, heat and light were considered chemical elements along with carbon and sulphur. Our language long misled us!) Fictitious elements of phlogiston and caloric were invoked to explain heating until satisfactorily explained as molecular motion.

And Henri Poincaré said this confusion could have been avoided if, instead of the substantive "heat", we had used the gerund "heating". (When I read this, I thought of application in our daily judgments.)

However, Poincaré did not speak of "the attributive"and its preponderance in our daily and technical language. And he did not note that the attributive is simply a coverup for the animistic relgion of our ancestors, believing that all animation in the universe is the behavior of inner spirits making contact with us. (In the file, "Ignored Language Abuses", I note how Einstein abandoned the protection that relativity would give him from this "virus".)

In attributive language, the animism is iplicit. And in the word "animal" it is appropriate. But it pops up it other direct ways, such as "animated cartoons" and "animated ads", etc. (Ah aint gunna let them cartunes an anymated ads put spyruts into my domysile!)

How can we maintain the "separation of Church and State" advocated by our Founding Fathers when we daily consort with perhaps the most primitive of all religions?

Forewarned is forearmed. Go forth and fumigate your language. You've been forewarned.

You're entitled to know my religious beliefs.