semantic drift: "disrupt"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Yes. The water pressure should also "disrupt" a bomb's structure.

  "Disable" would be a good word too, but I suppose that the police are too used to thinking of a "disabled" vehicle as one that cannot be driven away. Quite different from a disrupted one.

  JL

Scot LaFaive <scotlafaive at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Scot LaFaive
Subject: Re: semantic drift: "disrupt"
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Using "distrupt" makes it sound as if the car itself is the weapon. And what
does watering a car do to the bomb? Fries electrical circuits?

Scot

On Jan 18, 2008 3:23 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Jonathan Lighter
> Subject: semantic drift: "disrupt"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> The D.C. police are at the moment employing a bomb-squad robot called
> "Robocop" (maybe a trademark?) to investigate a suspicious vehicle. The
> police spokesperson is describing the
> procedure, which includes knocking out a window with a robotic arm, as
> "disrupting the vehicle." She says too that, once it had broken its way
> inside, the robot could fire a stream of water "to further disrupt the
> vehicle."
>
> I'd have said "neutralize," but "disrupt" seems to be the term of art.
>
> JL
>
>
>
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