spaz and Tiger Woods

[Jonathan Lighter]

Good treatment, Ben.  Not long ago I read the noun "spastic" used in a neutral way in a book written in the 1920s. OED shows neutral exx. between 1896 and as late as 1937.

  JL


Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Benjamin Zimmer
Subject: Re: spaz and Tiger Woods
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For anyone who's not yet sick and tired of the topic, I just put up a
Language Log post on the history of "spaz":

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003020.html


--Ben Zimmer

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