"Every single person in here is related"

[Jonathan Lighter]

As is so often true, Larry is correct.

JL

On Wed, Jun 13, 2012 at 7:30 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      "Every single person in here is related"
>
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>
> OK, here's the background:  reporter Ali Reed on News 8, WTNH TV (the
> local ABC affiliate in New Haven), promoing an upcoming segment, is
> pictured in front of a classroom in what turns out to be Greenwich High.
>  She teases:
>
> "This high school classroom in Greenwich may *look* like any other class,
> but it's not. I'll give you a clue: every single person in here is related."
>
> The real clue is the sub-thingy (what are those stationary crawls called
> again, when they don't actually move?), which reads: Teeming With Twins.
>  Yes, it's a classroom in which each student is related to some other
> student present--they're sets of twins or braces of triplets. (Turns out
> there 18 sets of twins and two of triplets in the freshman class,
> apparently some sort of record.) I couldn't describe that situation as one
> in which "every single person (in here) is related", which for me can only
> refer to a situation in which everyone in the room is related to everyone
> else in the room--one big happy (or not so happy) family.  Or maybe it
> could mean that everyone in the class is related to someone, which is
> *certainly* true (if uninformative).  But what it *can't* be used to mean
> is that everyone there is related to someone else there.  YMMV.
>
> LH
>
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