"Leader DeLay"??? What's up with that?

[Margaret Lee]

I have also heard Lawyer Smith to refer to an attorney.

Fred Shapiro <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU> wrote:When I moved to Connecticut in the late 1980s I was surprised to find that
many people in the legal community here used the expression "Attorney
Smith," which I had not heard before. The motivation is obvious: to mimic
the "make-no-mistake-I'm-someone-important" identification that is
standard for physicians.

I don't know whether this is a regionalism or not. I suspect this
locution is also well established in the African-American community.

Fred Shapiro


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Fred R. Shapiro Editor
Associate Librarian for Collections and YALE DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS
Access and Lecturer in Legal Research Yale University Press,
Yale Law School forthcoming
e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu http://quotationdictionary.com
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Margaret G. Lee, Ph.D.
Professor of English & Linguistics
  and University Editor
Department of English
Hampton University, Hampton, VA 23668
757-727-5769(voice);757-727-5084(fax)
margaret.lee at hamptonu.edu   or   mlee303 at yahoo.com

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