Anybody else?

[Wilson Gray]

On 11/3/05, Arnold M. Zwicky <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Anybody else?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Nov 3, 2005, at 10:27 AM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>
> > Has anybody else noticed the TV voice-over guy who speaks of "rare but
> > serious fatalities" that have _     _or may occur as a consequence of using
> > the patent medicine that he's shilling for?

D''oh! I, uh, meant "... that have _occurred_ or may occur ...," of
course. It was just a lapsus calami. That Latin make up for it, right?

-Wilson

> i hadn't caught this one, but it looks like a telescoping of
> something like:
>    rare but serious side-effects, including/even fatalities
> or possibly like a blend of
>    rare but serious side-effects
> and
>    rare fatalities.
>
> in any case, two related ideas have gotten compressed.
>
> noted on at least two blogs:
>
> Side effects include "rare but serious fatalities" I wonder exactly
> what a nonserious fatality would be. That was on a commercial just
> now. ...
> mtgrammar.powerblogs.com/
>
>
> and from The Devil's Robot,
>    http://blog.munge.net/page/2/
>
> -----
> 10.08.05  Semantics are Fun!
>
> Posted in Random at 2:07 pm by Aaron M
> So I just saw a commercial for some asthma medicine. The disclaimer
> section included the phrase "rare but serious fatalities occurred in
> a study…."
>
> I'm guessing those are way worse than trivial fatalities.
>


--
-Wilson Gray