CONSTANT COMPANION

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:40 AM -0400 4/11/05, RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:
>
>Denotatively, CONSTANT COMPANION and LONG-TERM COMPANION are not even quite
>the same thing, but connotatively--as the cites shown by others here clearly
>demonstrate--CONSTANT COMPANION is rarely if ever used to refer to a sexual
>relationship. It is NOT a euphemism. LONG-TERM COMPANION is a
>euphemism, as is (or
>was) SPECIAL FRIEND (alternatively, as Arnold Zwicky puts it, UH, FRIEND).
>
Or "umfriend", which I see has 1790 google hits.  "Friend plus" is
also heard, but has other uses, while I think "umfriend" is pretty
much univocal.

Larry