defeat to = loss to

[Wilson Gray]

Once upon a time, this assumption seemed reasonable to me: that a
language that used pre- or postpositions for the syntacto-phonetic
representation of CASE would be more stable over time than a language
that used endings.

This is only the most recent of many examples that have long since
disabused me of that clearly erroneous. How I ever came to consider
this as a possibility is a mystery, since I've always known
counterexamples such as BE _behind that_, which can mean _as a
consequence of that_, among other things. This kind of difference is
harder to explain than "defeat to," which could be explained away as a
hapax blend of _defeat by_ with _loss to_ that may never occur again.

One of the consequences of not being good enough to die young is
living to see a beautiful language slowly disintegrate along with
one's "complex body machine," to borrow H.G. Wells's felicitous
phrase. Sigh!

-Wilson


On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 3:08 PM, Michael Covarrubias
<mcovarru at purdue.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Michael Covarrubias <mcovarru at PURDUE.EDU>
> Subject:      defeat to = loss to
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> from an espn.com article on soccer:
>
> "Midfielder Brett Holman insists Australia have put the defeat to Iraq
> firmly behind them as they look to book their place in the fourth round
> of World Cup qualifying with a victory over Qatar on Saturday."
>
> http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id=546247&&cc=5901
>
> I can use 'defeat' interchangeably with 'loss' in a lot of constructions
> but I don't remember seeing this one.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Mark Twain

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