Who is Eddy Peters?

[Thomas Paikeday]

Without muddying the Eddy Peters waters, I think the borrow metaphor is
good enough if you mean "borrow" in the sense of "2. take and use: _Did
you borrow $5 from my wallet? 'Pizza' was borrowed from Italian into
English; n.: 'En masse' is a borrowing from French_ (= word adopted from
French)." (quoted from dict. below; sorry about the plug)

THOMAS M. PAIKEDAY (lexicographer since 1964)
Latest work, "The User's(R) Webster,"
ISBN 0-920865-03-8. Orders: cservice at genpub.com
--------------------------

Laurence Horn wrote:
>
> At 6:10 AM -0500 2/21/01, Paul McFedries wrote:
> >My interpretation is that to say a foreignism is "borrowed" from another
> >language or that it's a "loanword" implies a civil transaction of some kind:
> >"Excuse me, German, may I borrow the word 'schadenfreude' to use when I see
> >someone taking pleasure out of the misfortune of other people? Thank you!"
> >However, English is so aggressive at incorporating foreignisms that the
> >"borrow" and "loan" metaphors are too prissy and bureaucratic. To account
> >for the sheer volume of foreignisms that the language has accumulated, a
> >theft metaphor might be more apt.
>
> except for the fact that the principal differences between borrowing
> and theft are that
> (i) the borrower is expected to give the item back, while no such
> expectation applies to the thief
> (ii) the borrowee is a willing participant in the transaction, while
> the thief operates through stealth, violence, or threat
>
> Since a borrowed (or stolen) word remains in the source language
> after entering the target language, it's not clear that either
> metaphor really applies that well to words (or ideas, for that
> matter).  The transaction is (a little) more like xeroxing, cloning,
> or copying artwork.
>
> larry