disappearing prepositions

[Jonathan Lighter]

Phil Donahue used all of these (except the excrementary ones) regularly on his syndicated daily TV show from at least 1991, when I started noticing.

In fact, he was the first person I ever heard use "absent" in this way.

JL

Robert Wachal <robert-wachal at UIOWA.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Robert Wachal
Subject: disappearing prepositions
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When I was growing up a loooong time ago, if someone died, it was said that
they "passed away". Now everyone seems to say, "they passed".

We used to say "pissed/shit in their pants," now it's "pissed/shit their
pants"

Once people spoke of "being graduated from college', later "graduating from
college"; now it's "graduated college".

And what does the new preposition 'absent' have to offer that 'without'
lacks?


---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we.