Vals Kilmer (like "attorneys general"?)

[Jonathan Lighter]

Both those titles are translations from foreign languages.  But was the construction ever _common_ or _normal_ in English ?

  JL

"Mark A. Mandel" <mamandel at LDC.UPENN.EDU> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Mark A. Mandel"
Subject: Re: Vals Kilmer (like "attorneys general"?)
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Dennis R. Preston wrote

>>>

Of course it is cock-eyed, although French-eyed would be a better
label. The French term (hence the possibility of modifiers to the
eight) indicates the "general" scope of the office-holder's interest,
not a military-like rank at all.

<<<

Of course, dInIs meant to type "to the right". ... Or is "modifiers to the
eight" something new to me, akin to "dressed to the nines"?

---------------------

And Jonathan Lighter wrote:

>>>

The subtitle of the 1978 miniseries _Holocaust_ was "The Story of the
Family Weiss"
[http://library.maricopa.edu/ipac20/ipac.jsp?profile=cgc2&index=BIB&term=1
94741#focus]. I don't know whether this construction was simply an
imitation of Yiddish and German syntax, or whether it was once also common
in English.

<<<

"The Swiss Family Robinson"
"The Brothers Karamazov"


m a m

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