possible antedate of indiscriminative "whatever"?

[Joel S. Berson]

Oral memory is elusive--one should hear the scene (wait for the next
repeat on Turner Classic Movies!).  But I don't remember a stress on
the second syllable, and do remember receiving the "recent voguish"
sense.  I think I remember that the speaker sounds resigned, and the
discussion moves on to another aspect of the crime.

Joel

At 7/22/2006 08:41 AM, you wrote:
>On Sat, 22 Jul 2006, Jesse Sheidlower wrote:
>
>>It looks pretty solid to me. I'm trying to find a reason to
>>dismiss it, but can't.
>
>Aren't there two uses of intensive "whatever"?  One is a recent voguish
>use indicating extreme indifference: "if that's what you think, fine, it's
>not important enough to me to argue about it, end of discussion, let's
>move on to something else."  The other is a more traditional usage,
>unrecorded by OED, indicating anger and pronounced with a strong emphasis
>on the second syllable: "the point you are making is irrelevant to the
>real issue, which I will now explain to you."  This traditional use is
>probably elliptical for some saying like "whatever you say is besides the
>point."  I think Larry's example illustrates the second sense.  Am I
>misanalyzing this?
>
>Fred
>
>
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