"to bilk" with object not a person

[Joel S. Berson]

At 9/30/2010 08:41 PM, ronbutters at AOL.COM wrote:
>Bilked the restaurant/hotel/lodgings . . . What is the difference?

The OED definitions, as I noted in my first message in this chain:

2. To balk (hope, expectation); to cheat, deceive, betray.

3. To 'do (a person) out' of (his due); to cheat, defraud; to evade
payment of (a debt).

4. To elude, evade, escape from, 'give the slip' to.

It's hard to imagine an inanimate object having hopes balked, done
out of his due, or being given the slip.  As Jon and I have
suggested, a tweaking of (one of the) definitions can cure the
awkwardness and admit the lodgings.

Joel

>------Original Message------
>From: Joel S. Berson
>Sender: ADS-L
>To: ADS-L
>ReplyTo: ADS-L
>Subject: Re: [ADS-L] "to bilk" with object not a person
>Sent: Sep 30, 2010 7:33 PM
>
>At 9/30/2010 06:05 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> >That doesn't matter.  One set of grammatical objects is human, the other
> >ain't.
>
>But the next person who divides all the world into two classes says:
>
>One set is animate (human plus non-human), the other is inanimate.
>
>"Bailey bilked Remy of her food again yesterday."  (A friend boards
>and lodges these two cats, one of which likes to eat not only his own
>food but what's in the other cat's dish.  She has taken to putting
>Bailey food into Remy's dish -- but Bailey just keeps on snarfing
>from both.)  This, I imagine, fits the sense of "bilk" where
>"landlord" can be an object.
>
>"Bilk the lodgings" fits the second class.
>
>Joel
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
>
>Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org