Kidnapped

[Jonathan Lighter]

Since the Palestinian government has disowned the action and attributed it to "rogue elements," "kidnap" seems appropriate. The MSNBC story l looked at - and perhaps others - uses "seize" as well as "kidnap."

  The Israeli soldier is decribed as a "prisoner" rather than a "victim." Nor, so far as I know, were the Americans in Iraq called "victims," the word idiomatically used for people who have been "kidnaped."

  Even the most prominent label attached to events in a news story doesn't necessarily become definitive.

  JL

Barbara Need <nee1 at MIDWAY.UCHICAGO.EDU> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Barbara Need
Subject: Re: Kidnapped
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At 14:26 -0700 28/6/06, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> Now to split hairs. Technically the insurgents, whatever their
>motives, are indeed criminals under present Iraqi law, being in
>rebellion against a duly elected central government. Nor do they
>belong to any uniformed, coherent military force as, for example,
>were members of the American Confederate armed forces. To that
>extent their action is legitimately described as a kidnaping.

This applies to the Iraqi case, but not (?) the case of the Israeli soldier.

Barbara

Barbara Need
UChicago

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