So, is there a new use of so?

[Jonathan Lighter]

Or "number" by "amount."  Nobody says "a large number" anymore.

  JL

Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Wilson Gray
Subject: Re: So, is there a new use of so?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It's no worse than the wholesale replacement of "hence" by "thus."

-Wilson

On 10/23/06, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: "Arnold M. Zwicky"
> Subject: Re: So, is there a new use of so?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> a blast from the past:
>
> On Jan 2, 2006, at 2:36 PM, Jason Norris wrote:
>
> > Lately, I've been noticing an interesting use of the word "so," and
> > was wondering where it might come from? I've heard it more from
> > students and only within the last few years.
> >
> > Example: A woman walks in and says, "So I was trying find a
> > parking spot yesterday when it started raining..."
>
> now in the 10/14/06 Economist, a letter to the editor (p. 17), which
> begins:
>
> Battling on
>
> SIR - So the National Intelligence Estimate's assertion that the Iraq
> war has exacerbated terrorism would only be dismissed by "the
> wilfully dimsighted" ("Stating the obvious", September 30th). As you
> supported the incursion in the run-up to the war, and many times
> since, are you included among the visually impaired?
>
> -----
>
> a dfferent sort of example (challenging in tone) from the ones we
> looked at back in january.
>
> arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


--
Everybody says, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange
complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is knows how deep
a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our
race. He brought death into the world.

--Sam Clemens

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