Fwd: interesting turn for "hoi polloi"

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

"hoi polloi" drifts even further from its roots...

> From: Doug Worcester Kenter <dkenter at stanford.edu>
> Date: August 2, 2006 9:57:12 AM PDT
> To: "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu>
> Subject: interesting turn for "hoi polloi"
>
> a columnist in the san francisco chronicle appears to use the term
> "hoi
> polloi" to refer to polarities in social class, rather than just, "the
> people":
>
> Now we are not suggesting that he has willfully neglected his
> duties, or
> that anyone in the organization would call him on it even if he
> was. He has
> Lew Wolff and above him, John Fisher, pot-committed to his
> leadership style,
> but as he spends more time with the hoi and less with the polloi,
> he leaves
> more and more of the day-to-day A's-ery to aide de camp David
> Forst, to the
> point where Forst is almost the daily go-to guy on the baseball side.
>
> http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/
> 2006/08/02/SPG79K9MGE1.DTL
>
> i don't think i've ever heard the term split in half and used like
> this.
> maybe "hoi" sounds like "high," which creates a contrast from the
> usual
> meaning of the term.

it's new to me too, and it's not in our recent archives.  but here
are some more examples:

... and then it's off to the office to bitch on the phone with the
Michael Kors about the latest of the outrages committed by the hoi
and the polloi. ...
iamprettynyc.com/spotlight.php?s=7

1. Indistinguishable from the hoi and the polloi, that's me, except
in the height department. I speak in complete sentences mostly, have
been to more than a ...
www.minnesotacrimewave.org/carlbrookins/greedy.html

2. It is the interesting, though, is it not, that it is the peoples
like the John Galliano and his ilk, dictate to the hoi and the polloi
what is the ...
shoeblogs.com/wordpress/2005/05/19/440/

3. Mickey himself was not in imminent danger of falling into the
hands of the hoi and the polloi, but his predecessor Steamboat Willie
was. ...
technologyfront.com/journalism/2002/10/11.html

4. ... back in December of 1987, and his and Joan's home up in the
Hollywood Hills was jammed to the walls with the hoi and the polloi,
and at one point I'm ...
harlanellison.com/quotes.htm

5. Now of course there is nothing that slightly famous types like
better than to chat with the little peole, the ordinary joes, the hoi
and the polloi. ...
colonelknowledge.blogspot.com/ 2006_05_01_colonelknowledge_archive.html

6. He is pretty comfortable with being desired by the hoi and the
polloi, and at the time is having an affair with a much older woman.
She is twenty-three. ...
kill-your-inner-child.blogspot.com/

-----

these fall into two groups: one (like kenter's original) in which
"the hoi" and "the polloi" are contrasted, as hoi/high/elite vs.
polloi/people/low (so that "the hoi polloi" is being interpreted as
meaning 'the high and the low', that is, 'everybody'; and one (in #5,
clearly) in which "the hoi" and "the polloi" are understood as rough
synonyms meaning 'the common people' (so that "the hoi polloi" is
being interpreted as meaning 'the common people, your ordinary Janes
and Joes').

it's not always clear which interpretation was intended in some of
these examples.

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)

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