A hawk-eyed reader has delivered me a dose of comeuppance.
He challenged my assertion that there is no such word as "upcoming." I recently described "upcoming" as an expedient combination of "coming" and "up" — designed to save money on telegraph service, which charged by the word.
"Hawkeye" pointed out that "upcoming" has become a dictionary-approved word. You can look it up.
I did.
Guilty as charged.
It's just that "upcoming" has been as much of a pet peeve to me as "hopefully" was to the late New York Times columnist William Safire.
Safire had been a speechwriter in the Nixon administration; he was most noted for putting into the mouth of Vice President Spiro Agnew the words quoted here, in a speech blasting the news media as "nattering nabobs of negativism."
Most Safire columns focused on politics. But his occasional columns on the use and misuse of language gave readers special delight.