"war with words"

Joel S. Berson Berson at ATT.NET
Sat Feb 1 20:47:00 UTC 2014


At 2/1/2014 09:06 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>Yahoo! news headline:
>
>
>Magic Johnson calls off his needless, one-sided war with words with Lakers
>coach Mike D'Antoni.
>
>It's a kind of "war" that uses words as "weapons." The absurd "war of
>words," said by old people, means that the words "belong to" the war. Which
>is just so bogus and illogical.

How about the "War of Jenkins' Ear"?  Even more illogically, his ear
had been returned to him nearly a decade before the war started.

Joel

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



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