Fwd: more astounding acronyms

[Wilson Gray]

Fascinating! And, for all these many years, I've assumed that "drag" was to
be ultimately extracted from "Stag or drag." ;-) I guess that I qualify as
"wordlorn" in this case.

-Wilson

On 12/15/05, Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Fwd: more astounding acronyms
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On 12/15/05, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> > At 7:38 PM +0000 12/15/05, Michael Quinion wrote:
> > >So you didn't. What would Freud have said about my misreading of
> > >"wordlorn" as "lovelorn", I wonder?
> >
> > He would have noticed that "lovelorn" is an actual word, while
> > "wordlorn" was an underhanded nonce construct [...]
>
> A snowclone, even...
>
> http://www.google.com/search?q=advice-to-the-*-lorn+-love-lorn
>
> (First page has advice to the Mormon-lorn, flu-lorn, lyric-lorn,
> lab-lorn, luck-lorn, Lovecraft-lorn, library-lorn, etc. Initial "L"
> works best, preserving the alliteration of "lovelorn.")
>
> Speaking of snowclones, they seem to be gathering a following on
> Wikipedia. The entry for "snowclone" has been steadily expanding, as
> has a new one listing examples:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowclone
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Snowclones
>
>
> --Ben Zimmer
>



--
-Wilson Gray