delibility

[Wilson Gray]

Sigh! I miss the indelible pencils of my pre-adolescence, when every
English-speaking child understood intuitively that "indelible" wasn't
merely a weakening of "delible." Well, it was more likely the case
that only a lexicographer had any idea that a word "delible" even
existed. And I wouldn't even be surprised to discover that that
announcer had no idea, either.

-Wilson

On Sun, Nov 15, 2009 at 10:58 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      delibility
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>  From one of the CBS announcers of today's Jets-Jaguars football game,
> after Jets' quarterback Mark Sanchez is sacked in the first quarter
> and goes down hard:
>
> "Those type of hits leave an indelible--and sometimes a *delible* mark."
>
> Evident a delible mark is like an indelible one only more so.
>
> LH
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
-Wilson
–––
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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