Bring back the slums ?

It is often very difficult for an investigative pedant to be sure just how a new usage insinuates itself into our language, or even whether such a usage is indeed new at all. One that disturbs this particular pedant whenever he encounters it is what we might call the 'false double-as'. The 'true double-as' may be a simple phrase like 'as plain as a pike-staff' (though not all of us will be aware what a pikestaff actually is), or 'as cool as a cucumber', or 'as many as you like'.

In these instances, A is being likened to B.

There are also many uses of the 'single-as': 'As I was going to St. Ives, I met a man with seven wives. . .'; 'Our daughter went to the fancy dress party as a milk-maid'; 'As an independent adviser, I have a special responsibility . . . ' The notion that lies behind all these is the simultaneity or co-incidence of two facts or factors: I and the man with a big family meeting en route to the Fair; the daughter and her costume; the independent advice and the consequent obligation to the truth. Another usage of the 'single-as' (meaning 'in the way that') is the well-worn phrase 'life as we know it'. The idiom 'as if' is similar.

But how about the usage 'Much as I would like to see Windsor Castle, I'm afraid I'm not free that day'; or 'Clever as he is, I don't think he's the person we need for this particular job' ? Here we are using 'as' to mean 'though'. It's a well-established idiom, in which two concepts are being not likened, but contrasted. Yes but no.

The disturbing new (mis-)usage is to introduce a 'double-as' into this last category of 'single-as' idioms.

Many people are now doing just this. You hear it on the telly or radio, you read it in articles by sloppy journalists. Here's a sample from the Radio Times this week:

"As dire as slums may appear, they represent a huge improvement."

What the writer means (we must assume, or his ideas must be very weird indeed) is "Dire though slums may appear, they represent a huge improvement". His mistake is that is that he used a 'double-as' construction to signify contrast, when traditionally it has been used to signify coincidence or similarity. What he has written can only mean 'The slums, as they appear to us, represent a huge improvement'. Whereas the sentence with a single-as, "Dire as slums may appear to us, they in fact represent a huge improvement on . . .", makes the sense which (judging by the context) I believe he intends.

Bring back the slums ?