OT almost entirely: Radu Florescu, 88, Scholar of Dracula, and the OED

[Geoffrey Steven Nathan]

And the reference to Superman/Clark Kent is a useful metaphor when trying to explain 'phonemes'--they are physically similar and never in the same place at the same time.

Geoffrey S. Nathan
Faculty Liaison, C&IT
and Professor, Linguistics Program
http://blogs.wayne.edu/proftech/
+1 (313) 577-1259 (C&IT)

Nobody at Wayne State will EVER ask you for your password. Never send it to anyone in an email, no matter how authentic the email looks.

----- Original Message -----

> From: "Laurence Horn" <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Sent: Saturday, May 31, 2014 8:40:11 PM
> Subject: Re: OT almost entirely: Radu Florescu, 88, Scholar of
> Dracula, and the OED

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject: Re: OT almost entirely: Radu Florescu, 88, Scholar of
> Dracula,
> and the OED
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

> On May 31, 2014, at 8:25 PM, George Thompson wrote:

> > JB, quoting the NYTimes:
> > "Have you ever seen Count Dracula and Vlad the Impaler in the same
> > place
> > at the same time?"
> >
> > It seems to me that this is a formula -- "Have you ever seen X and
> > Y
> > together"?, or, as here, "in the same place at the same time?" --
> > that I
> > have encountered from time to time of late, usually written with a
> > humorously raised eyebrow.
> > Any evidence of its origin?
> >
> > GAT

> Lois Lane, considering to herself whether she'd ever seen Superman
> and Clark Kent in the same place at the same time? (No raised
> eyebrow in that case because she really was entertaining the
> secret-identity hypothesis, which may be being alluded to in later
> take-offs on such complementary distribution.) Of course
> Superman/Clark Kent may not be the first of these, just the first I
> was aware of, not being up on The Morning Star and The Evening Star
> at that point in my life.

> LH
> >
> >
> > On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 10:15 AM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> The famous Margalit Fox -- check the ADS-L archives -- has written
> >> another elegant and sly obituary, this time about Radu Florescu,
> >> who
> >> died on May 18. In the NYTimes -- at least the New England Edition
> >> -- May 29, page B17. (For unknown reasons, the on-line Times won't
> >> give it to me. Search results for, say, "Dracula", Newest first,
> >> are
> >> to say the least peculiar; and a search for "Margalit Fox"
> >> produces zero results in the Past 7 Days.) Anyhoo, juicy excerpts:
> >>
> >> [Opening paragraphs:]
> >> "Have you ever seen Count Dracula and Vlad the Impaler in the
> >> same place at the same time?
> >> "Of course not, and that, according to Radu Florescu, is
> >> precisely the point: The two men, he argued, were one and the
> >> same."
> >> ...
> >> "By day, Professor taught at Boston College, where, at his
> >> death, he was an emeritus professor of history ..."
> >> [One intervening paragraph.]
> >> "But thanks to his moonlight job, Professor Florescu was for
> >> four decades also one of the world's leading experts in matters
> >> Dracular."
> >>
> >> [This is the minimally relevant bit: Dracular (adj.) not in
> >> OED. But 'll bet the professor and the count also were never seen
> >> in
> >> the same place at the same time.]
> >> ...
> >> "As he would learn in the course of his research, he had a
> >> family connection to Vlad, who was known familiarly if not quite
> >> fondly as Vlad Tepes, or Vlad the Impaler. A Florescu ancestor was
> >> said to have married Vlad's brother, felicitously named Radu the
> >> Handsome."
> >> ...
> >> "Both Vlad and Count Dracula displayed marked criminal
> >> proclivities: Vlad was know for dispatching his Ottoman foes (as
> >> may
> >> as 100,000 in some accounts) with sharpened stakes. Dracula, who
> >> did
> >> not care for stakes, favored a more direct approach."
> >>
> >> [And the concluding paragraph:]
> >> "If, in his second career, Professor Florescu risked the
> >> opprobrium of some ivory-tower colleagues, he seemed unperturbed.
> >> At
> >> Dracula conventions around the world -- and there are many -- he
> >> sometimes materialized wearing a cape, a reliable indication that
> >> when it came to Stoker's sanguinary protagonist, Professor
> >> Florescu
> >> did not mind sticking his neck out."
> >>
> >> RIP.
> >>
> >> Joel
> >>
> >> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > George A. Thompson
> > The Guy Who Still Looks Stuff Up in Books.
> > Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre",
> > Northwestern
> > Univ. Pr., 1998..
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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

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