Oh, Lord!

[Wilson Gray]

Your examples are all good to me, too, Ben. After thinking it over, I
feel that my real problem is with the concept of a bridge "lording
over" a neighborhood. Oddly enough, though, the addition of "it" still
kisses the sentence and makes it all better. WTFK?

-Wilson Gray

On 5/25/05, Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at rci.rutgers.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at RCI.RUTGERS.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Oh, Lord!
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Wed, 25 May 2005 15:08:25 -0400, Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>
> >Today's NYT, p.A24: "... the Manhattan Bridge ... _lords over_ this
> >Lower East Side neighborhood."
> >
> >Isn't/wasn't the idiom "_lord *it* over_"?
> >
> >Here's another one from Google (115,000 hits of various combinations,
> >such as the "Lord Over Church"):
> >
> >"... Producer Jerry Bruckheimer all set to _lord over_ American
> >television this year."
>
>
> OED has some historical examples of "lord over" without indefinite "it".
> The passive "BE lorded over (by)" seems perfectly acceptable to me, and
> the active form doesn't bother me too much.
>
> 1671 -- Samson 265 They had by this..lorded over them whom now they serve.
> 1685 DRYDEN tr. Lucretius III. 242 That haughty King, who lorded ore the
> Main,..Him Death, a greater Monarch, overcame.
> 1777 BURKE Address King Wks. 1842 II. 402 Much less are we desirous of
> lording over our brethren.
> 1833 CHALMERS Const. Man (1835) I. iii. 156 Its unhappy patient is lorded
> over by a power of moral evil.
> 1881 BLACKMORE Christowell xxxi, I am not one to be lorded over by a man
> no better than myself.
>
>
> --Ben Zimmer
>


--
-Wilson Gray