"Don Pearce" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 30 Dec 2006 18:36:20 +0000, Eiron wrote:

Don Pearce wrote:

The word "grammatic" isn't even in Merriam-Webster online. In
Dictionary Online it is given the meaning "of or pertaining to
grammar", which is not the usage we had here, which was of the correct
use of grammar - the word for which is grammatical.

The OED has no entry for grammatic.

Mine does, and that's just the Shorter OED.
When I'm feeling really pedantic I cycle seven miles to the public
library to consult the full 24 volume edition.

Quite so. But grammatic and grammatical mean two quite different
things. You can talk about the grammatic structure of a sentence, but
if you are discussing the correctness of that structure, the word is
grammatical.



No, they mean exactly the same. It is just that there are times when to use
one suits the situation/context (in 'High English'??) better than the other.
Common with words ending 'ic' - spheric/spherical, symmetric/symmetrical are
two other examples which spring immediately to mind...