Coley (not a fish but Veronica’s dog, which we were looking after) yelped, from surprise rather than pain, when my husband threw down the paper on the spot where the poor dog was taking his rest. ‘What’s he mean, “convince”?’
The culprit was a writer on the sports pages who had referred to Tom Hicks ‘trying to convince the banks to renegotiate the structure of the loans’. This encroachment by convince on to the territory of persuade has been going on for most of my life. It happens all the time now, but I do not feel moved to frighten the dog each time I detect it. My husband, I am sorry to say, has adopted the attitude of Betsey Trotwood to donkeys’ trespassing on the piece of green outside her house. Instead of crying, ‘Janet! Donkeys!’ he shouts, ‘What’s he mean, “convince”?’
The donkey sense of convince seems to have come from America.
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