transitivity of "expire" (fwd)

[Mark A Mandel]

On Wed, 27 Feb 2002, sagehen wrote:

#" an excaped convict" !!
#oh, THAT's where we get "ex-con."

Do you think so? I've always thought

1. convict 'person convicted of a crime' shortened > con

2. con semantically shifted to 'person serving a prison sentence'

3. ex-con 'person who has served a prison sentence and been released',
hence no longer a con (#2) although arguably a convict (#1)

-- Mark A. Mandel
   Linguist at Large