possible antedate of indiscriminative "whatever"?

[Joel S. Berson]

My apologies,Laurence.  Did I miss that you said you had recently
viewed the movie?

Joel

At 7/22/2006 10:12 AM, you wrote:
>>Oral memory is elusive--one should hear the scene (wait for the next
>>repeat on Turner Classic Movies!).  But I don't remember a stress on
>>the second syllable,
>
>Stress was on first syllable, although I'll take it out from the
>library again to confirm it (the scene was at approx. 1:22 on the
>DVD counter).
>
>>  and do remember receiving the "recent voguish"
>>sense.  I think I remember that the speaker sounds resigned, and the
>>discussion moves on to another aspect of the crime.
>
>Yes, he's waving off the police detective, and the sense is one of
>ungracious concession, which I take to be the heart of the current
>trendy use.  ("Even if you're right, it's irrelevant because...")
>
>LH
>
>>
>>At 7/22/2006 08:41 AM, you wrote:
>>>On Sat, 22 Jul 2006, Jesse Sheidlower wrote:
>>>
>>>>It looks pretty solid to me. I'm trying to find a reason to
>>>>dismiss it, but can't.
>>>
>>>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."  The other is a more traditional usage,
>>>unrecorded by OED, indicating anger and pronounced with a strong emphasis
>>>on the second syllable: "the point you are making is irrelevant to the
>>>real issue, which I will now explain to you."  This traditional use is
>>>probably elliptical for some saying like "whatever you say is besides the
>>>point."  I think Larry's example illustrates the second sense.  Am I
>>>misanalyzing this?
>>>
>>>Fred
>>>
>>>
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