indefensible (basketball)

Benjamin Zimmer bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU
Thu May 4 03:31:40 UTC 2006


The Cleveland Cavaliers are playing the Washington Wizards in an NBA
playoff game broadcast on TNT. One of the commentators just had this
to say about LeBron James:

"If he's making his jump shot, he is completely indefensible."

That's "indefensible" in the sense of "unable to be defensed". See our
earlier discussion of "defense" as a verb meaning "play defense
against":

http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A1=ind0511b&L=ads-l&D=0&I=-3#20


--Ben Zimmer

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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