"full of win"

Arnold Zwicky zwicky at STANFORD.EDU
Sun May 31 17:33:24 UTC 2009


On May 30, 2009, at 7:47 PM, Neal Whitman wrote:

>> ... I think it's a more general process of turning any part of
>> speech into a
> mass noun. I've heard it with an adjective, when someone told me
> earlier
> this year that she'd met a celebrity and he was "completely made of
> awesome." I also heard it with an interjection in the movie _Juno_,
> when the
> title character emphatically rejects a pass someone makes at her,
> telling
> him it's "a great big bag of No!"

i think this idea is right on the mark.  somewhere i have some other
examples, though i can't find them at the moment.  (they ought to be
in my "nouning" file, but except for "win" and "fail", they're not.
sigh.)

i also think that all the examples i've seen have the nouning as the
object of "of", and then only "of" in certain uses.

arnold

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