another weirdly generalized "ironically"

[Laurence Horn]

>Ironically, Larry, we young moderns are all using "ironically" to
>mean "interestingly."
>
>So get with it.
>
>JL

Hmmm...

"I forgot to bring my umbrella with me today, and interestingly
enough it rained."

"Cano blew the sacrifice and interestingly enough he then hit into a
double play."

Well, if one's interest threshold is low enough, I suppose.    Whatever.

L


>
>Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:
>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>-----------------------
>Sender: American Dialect Society
>Poster: Laurence Horn
>Subject: another weirdly generalized "ironically"
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>>>From a discussion on WFAN sports talk radio this morning, recapping a
>Yankees game over the weekend, co-host Sid Rosenberg described how
>Yankees rookie Robinson Cano failed to bunt the potential tying and
>winning runs over from 1st and 2nd base in the ninth inning, and then
>"ironically enough" hit into a double play, the possibility of which
>is precisely what a successful bunt would have been designed to
>avoid. In trying to come up with a non-baseball analogy, I came up
>with this:
>
>"I forgot to bring my umbrella to work with me today, and ironically
>enough it rained."
>
>Even "coincidentally" or "curiously enough" doesn't work as a
>paraphrase here. Maybe "predictably" would work instead, but that
>doesn't seem particularly ironic. It seems to me that Cano hitting a
>game-winning home run would have been a better example of irony.
>
>larry
>
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