Rampant Speculation

Last weekend I went to Austin to see my sister graduate from the University of Texas (congratulations, Ellen!). During the visit with Mom, Dad, Glen, and Ellen, we had several conversations about English grammar, and just before they took me to the airport for my return flight, Dad was complaining about the strange vocabulary used by airline employees. Now for years, he’s expressed his dislike of the word deplane, meaning “to disembark.” (“To deplane should mean to remove planes from someone!”) This time, though, he had an item that was new to me: the use of ramp to refer to what the rest of us call the runway or the tarmac. more