poliphilo: (Default)
poliphilo ([personal profile] poliphilo) wrote2022-07-07 08:38 am

Benefit Of Doubt

Sajid Javid kept saying "benefit of doubt". That's wrong, isn't it? Surely it's "benefit of the doubt". Every time he did it- and we must have heard it a dozen times because the TV channels kept replaying the speech- it was as if the needle had hit a crack and jumped.

Otherwise, it was a good speech. One for the history books. One that will be replayed in every documentary about the Johnson years for all time to come (or as long as people take an interest in the decline and fall of the United Kingdom.)

Benefit of doubt...

Benefit of doubt...

Benefit of doubt....
cmcmck: (Default)

[personal profile] cmcmck 2022-07-07 09:08 am (UTC)(link)
He certainly shafted Bojo good and proper!

Someone needed to!
cmcmck: (Default)

[personal profile] cmcmck 2022-07-07 12:17 pm (UTC)(link)
Ambitious bugger for sure!
conuly: (Default)

[personal profile] conuly 2022-07-07 09:54 am (UTC)(link)
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=benefit+of+doubt%2C+benefit+of+the+doubt&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3#

Both forms were pretty much nonexistent in printed matter prior to the mid-1800s. Although "benefit of the doubt" is substantially more popular, "benefit of doubt" picked up about 100 years later and has not been out of print since in any given year.