Fwd: more astounding acronyms

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Thu Dec 15 19:45:49 UTC 2005


At 7:38 PM +0000 12/15/05, Michael Quinion wrote:
>Laurence Horn wrote
>
>>  Note (above) that I didn't say you did.
>
>So you didn't. What would Freud have said about my misreading of
>"wordlorn" as "lovelorn", I wonder?
>
>
>--
>Michael Quinion
>Editor, World Wide Words
>E-mail: wordseditor at worldwidewords.org
>Web: http://www.worldwidewords.org

He would have noticed that "lovelorn" is an actual word, while
"wordlorn" was an underhanded nonce construct, and he would have
allowed that sometimes a misreading is only a misreading.   (Whence
the expression "close but no cigar".)

Larry



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