More re: possible antedate of indiscriminative "whatever"?
Fred Shapiro
fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU
Sat Jul 22 12:51:25 UTC 2006
On Sat, 22 Jul 2006, Fred Shapiro wrote:
> Aren't there two uses of intensive "whatever"? One is a recent voguish
> use indicating extreme indifference: "if that's what you think, fine, it's
> not important enough to me to argue about it, end of discussion, let's
> move on to something else."
As I think about it, the now-voguish use actually has been around for a
while. Think of "whatever" with the first syllable emphasized and the
first ayllable spoken slowly with an air of resignation. This is the
precursor of the voguish usage, and probably goes back many decades.
Fred Shapiro
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Fred R. Shapiro Editor
Associate Librarian for Collections and YALE BOOK OF QUOTATIONS
Access and Lecturer in Legal Research Yale University Press,
Yale Law School forthcoming
e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu http://quotationdictionary.com
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