more Millionaire Matchmaker novelties

[Dan Goncharoff]

I would think Facebook is driving current usage. The first two choices are
"single" and "in a relationship". There are many more choices, including,
"It's complicated".

DanG

On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 11:04 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: more Millionaire Matchmaker novelties
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> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 7:22 PM, Jonathan Lighter
> <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > single   adj. not in a monogamous unmarried sexual relationship [Cf. OED
> 8b
> > & 8c, neither of which quite fit]: Â "Have you ever been married?" "No.
> Have
> > you?" "No." "So how long have you been single?" "About a year and a half.
> > How long have you been single?" [Too difficult to search for.]
> >
>
> Has the expansion of this meaning driven _divorced_ out of colloquial
> speech? I've noticed for dekkids that people that I would call
> "divorced [and not remarried]" generally refer to themselves as
> "single," which, IME, means - or used to mean - "unmarried now and was
> never in the past." On TV's various "reality" shows, at least,
> "single" means, essentially, "I'm willing to cheat on whatever fool
> I'm currently balling" and not much else.
>
> --
> -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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