Heard on The Judges: "re-girlfriend" n.

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Tue Nov 11 00:17:17 UTC 2008


At 4:15 PM -0500 11/10/08, Wilson Gray wrote:
>Late-twenty-ish, white female speaker:
>
>"He told me that he wanted to move in with me because he couldn't
>stand his old girlfriend's - well, _re-girlfriend's_, now - children.
>
>
>The "he" in question, after confidencing the speaker into thinking
>that he was going to dump his pswaydo-family for her, got her to buy
>him a newer pickup, so that he would be able to get to work. It turned
>out that he had been fired from his job and, once that he had the
>truck, he went back to his old girlfriend and their children.
>
>"Re-girlfriend" was a nice effort on the part of the suckered woman to
>come up with a nonce-term to describe the situation in as few words as
>possible, IMO.
>
I wonder (without checking google) whether "re-wife" and "re-husband"
already exist, for someone one has remarried.  After checking, I see
an urbandictionary.com listing for the former.  A bit tricky to check
because of all the "Re: Wife" etc. sites.

LH

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