transitivity of "expire" (fwd)

[sagehen]

>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
~~~~~~~~~~~~
I *meant* to make a joke of Larry's typo of  x for s in "escaped."
AM


A&M Murie
N. Bangor NY
sagehen at westelcom.com