Bryan Garner May Be Running Out of Tips

I strongly recommend Bryan Garner's Usage Tip of the Day, which is almost invariably interesting and sometimes quite helpful.  Now and then, however, he seems to be straining the definition of "usage" (in the sense of things that may actually be used).  Here is his latest, which resolves an orthographic dispute that was last alive over 200 years ago:

witenagemot,

witenagemot, the historical term referring to the Anglo-Saxon council of nobles and officials who advised the king on administrative and judicial matters, has been predominantly so spelled since about 1800. The variant spelling *witenagemote flourished for a time in the 18th century but hasn’t been widely used in print sources since then. Whatever the spelling, the word is pronounced /wit-әn-ә-gә-moht/ or /wit-әn-ә-yә-moht/      To complicate spelling matters, a member of this council was called a witan, from the Old English verb of the same spelling (witan = to know). Note that the fourth character is an a, not an e as in the longer compound. Hence the council term was also sometimes spelled *witanagemot, but this form of the word never became standard.

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Comments

[Captain Hruska Carswell, Continuance King]

I have nothing to add, but feel compelled to blather on anyway.
Hardee Burger
Law students are stupid
Law professors are idiots
Hardee Burgers

[Captain Hruska Carswell, Continuance King]

Hey, no stealing my handle. You are just jealous of my sagacity, probity and not on the CPD's SSL. I have no IR number either. Just VoteTrump, Brackets and a few other assorted anons, ANON are allowed to be pithy. Anyway, they are called Thick Burgers. Do you have any idea why I offer them?

[Steve L.]

It appears that the first comment on this thread is not from the actual Captain HC, as I can tell from the email (seen by me, but not anyone else). Sorry that I did not notice that when it first went up.

Captain: You seem to have taken this in good cheer, but I will delete it if you wish.

SL

[Captain Hruska Carswell, Continuance King]

Nope, don't delete. I have bigger things to worry about. My dog is kinda sick and January 20th is just around the corner.

[anon]

Great comment thread.

I understand the reason Lubet deleted the call for comments about the Charleston situation. Why discuss that subject on the FL?

But, I don't understand leaving up the comments above.

The relationship between the Captain and Lubet is beginning to seem a bit curious ... The Captain, a vulgarian of the first order who obviously posted comments on this thread having nothing to do whatsoever with the subject of the post, is afforded not only friendly tolerance, but encouragement. The reason?

[Steve L.]

Temporarily suspending my policy of not replying to anonymous posts: I deleted no comments today (or this week) about Charleston or anything else.

Standing policy is now back in effect.

SL

[anon]

Apologies, Steve. I was looking at the wrong thread, and dazzled by the Captain's prolific comments on both! YOu are correct, and this was my error. Again, my apologies.