[Ads-l] Urban legend? Or fact?

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Thu Oct 6 17:47:44 UTC 2016


On Thu, Oct 6, 2016 at 11:42 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

> "X is widely beloved/beloved by all"


What is the difference between

"X is widely _beloved_ by all"

- regardless of the number of syllables in _beloved_ -

 and

"X is widely _loved_ by all"?

I've long wondered what the answer may be. Does prefixing _be-_ affect the
meaning of _loved_, in some way, in this environment, or is it merely a
pseudo-rhetorical flourish whose function is to fancy up an-otherwise-banal
_loved_ by giving it a for-the-hell-it extra syllable?


-- 
-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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