Oh, Lord!

[Wilson Gray]

On May 25, 2005, at 9:38 PM, James C Stalker wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       James C Stalker <stalker at MSU.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Oh, Lord!
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> But can bridges lord over boroughs?
>
> Jim
>

Good point, Jim!

-Wilson

> Benjamin Zimmer writes:
>
>> 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
>>
>
>
>
> James C. Stalker
> Department of English
> Michigan State University
>