It's obvious!---(a blend)

Mon Jun 26 20:42:03 UTC 2006

On Jun 26, 2006, at 8:12 AM, Jerry Cohen wrote:

> It's a syntactic blend: from "leave" + "go out."  For a similar
> blend, cf. "rise up" (from "rise" + "get/move up")
>
> Gerald Cohen
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: American Dialect Society on behalf of Wilson Gray
> Sent: Mon 6/26/2006 9:39 AM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: It's obvious!
>
> All of my life, I've wondered why some people say "leave out" instead
> of simply "leave."
>
> Well, I've just heard someone say, "I was coming _in_ as he was
> leaving _out_."
>
> -Wilson

as i've said here before (several times), just because an expression
type *can* be analyzed as a blend doesn't mean it *should* be;
something rather different might have been going on in the speaker's/
writer's mind.  in particular, the urge to "pile on" elements for
emphasis is very strong; this produces combinations that some advice
books treat as redundant, pleonastic, or merely unnecessarily wordy,
as in the following from MWDEU under "redundancy" (MWDEU is not
necessarily proscribing them):

pick out
refer back
from off
return/revert back
repeat over
continue on
off of

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