These days, at least according to the puzzlemakers at the Times; 'react to a mosquito bite'. If I react to a mosquito bite, I scratch the itch, I don't itch the... probably useless to cavil. Now I must go see whether the Dictionary recognizes this 'progress' in usage. After I make tuna salad for later and tomorrow, and after Terce.
Handel is entertaining me this morning, cool (60 degrees F.) and bright as it is, Autumn just around the corner (and only the day before yesterday it was 97 degrees), and the jays.
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Altered the morning routine, as I haven't been sleeping soundly until later in the night; I rose at 0300 for the Office and then proceeded with the morning nonsense, skipping the livestreamed Mass from Warrington at 0400. These hot nights won't last much longer. In any event, I finished the tuna salad and a couple of other tasks in the kitchen and then thoughtlessly made breakfast, the upshot being I still haven't said Terce.
As far as the itching and scratching goes, eh. Of course 'itch' is a verb-- but I'll leave the title supra unaltered as a memorial to the muddledness of my thinking at five a.m. or whenever that was written.
It seems perfectly clear (both in the Dictionary and to me) that the standard use of the verb 'to itch' in both its intransitive and transitive senses precludes 'itching the itch'. This-- the Times's puzzle's clue, I mean-- seems to be, however, an instance of that degradation of English usage that we are meant to accept as part of the 'natural evolution of language': see here (ten years ago) and (this year) here at StackExchange's English usage pages.
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Before Compline. At least the temperature is not going beyond 92 this evening; the question of course is what will it fall to and by what hour.
Two women, the one employed as physical therapist and the other as a classroom behavioral specialist for children 'with special needs' evidently assaulted a state legislator in Madison, were filmed or videotaped doing it, and the Althouse commenters are (figuratively) placing bets on their licenses being revoked, their serving time in jail, etc, on the one side, and on the other, on the women receiving the proverbial 'slap on the wrist' because while they are white they also belong to two categories of protected identities. My interest in linking here to Dr Althouse's post is that a large part of it and the commentary turns on Professor Jonathan Turley's propensity for committing typos in what he publishes. I am still smarting from having committed myself this morning to evidently, 'itch' is, correctly, a verb-- a simple error, not a typo, but from my point of view typos are simple errors, and Professor Turley's nonchalance about his simple errors has made my own seem less egregious. I assure the gentle reader that 'itch' has no 'Freudian' significance, none.
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