"Leader DeLay"??? What's up with that?

[Fred Shapiro]

When I moved to Connecticut in the late 1980s I was surprised to find that
many people in the legal community here used the expression "Attorney
Smith," which I had not heard before.  The motivation is obvious: to mimic
the "make-no-mistake-I'm-someone-important" identification that is
standard for physicians.

I don't know whether this is a regionalism or not.  I suspect this
locution is also well established in the African-American community.

Fred Shapiro


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Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
Associate Librarian for Collections and     YALE DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS
  Access and Lecturer in Legal Research     Yale University Press,
Yale Law School                             forthcoming
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