refugee, IDP, evacuee

[Jonathan Lighter]

Good job, Ben.

It still amazes me that, so far as we can tell, one anonymous, ill-informed person, interviewed by one TV correspondent, can turn a non-issue of long standing into a matter for front-page international comment.

Also, nobody has  seemed capable of acknowledging, or even suggesting, that despite a stipulated technical sense for U.N. agencies, a word can also have a familiar broader sense in ordinary discourse.

JL

Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at RCI.RUTGERS.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Benjamin Zimmer
Subject: Re: refugee, IDP, evacuee
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I was interviewed (along with Roberta Cohen of the Brookings Institution)
for the Voice of America program "Wordmaster", which is airing a segment
this week on the "refugee" controversy. Audio and transcript available
here:

http://voanews.com/specialenglish/Wordmaster/2005-09-13-voa3.cfm


--Ben Zimmer


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