"longtime partner"

[Laurence Horn]

At 3:46 PM -0700 6/15/05, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
>from the NYT Science Times of 6/13/05, Denis Overbye's "Found:
>Earth's Distant Cousin (About 15 Light-Years Away)", p. D3, on the
>discovery of "the smallest planet yet outside the solar system" by a
>team including "Dr. Geoffrey Marcy of the University of California,
>Berkeley" (the focus of the story), plus "Dr. Paul Butler of the
>Carnegie Institution of Washington, Dr. Jack Lissauer of NASA's Ames
>Research Center and Dr. Eugenio Rivera of the University of
>California, Santa Cruz":
>
>-----
>This is the 107th score for Dr. Marcy and his longtime partner, Dr.
>Butler.
>-----
>
>i'm guessing, from the context, that overbye was referring to a
>research partnership, though i would have said "longtime
>collaborator".  and i certainly had to think for a moment whether
>overbye might be talking about a domestic (but long-distance)
>partnership.
>
Yes, it does read that way, or can, as implausible as that reading is
in the context.  Safire noted a while (or, if you prefer, awhile) ago
the increasing tendency to use "business partner" as a retronym,
where "partner" would have sufficed in the past (on the pattern of
"biological mother").  For the same reason I wouldn't be surprised to
see "longtime research partner" rather than "longtime partner" to
disambiguate references like the one above.

Larry