More semantic drift

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Sep 22, 2006, at 7:33 AM, Jon Lighter wrote:

> A leading publisher has retained a number of learned academics to
> prepare teacher's guides to great works of literature.  One such
> guide exhibits the following usages which I suspect are more than
> idiosyncratic yet appear to be relatively novel...
>
>  ...  _espouse_, v. to relate or recount: "Lysistrata convinces the
> women to return to the Akropolis by espousing a prophecy that
> describes their victory if they remain chaste."

it's a short leap from "espouse" 'embrace, adopt (an opinion)'  to
'espouse in speech'; after all, the usual way we discover that
someone espouses an opinion is through their avowal of it in speech
(or writing).  then from there to 'enunciate, relate'.  but, yes, a
drift, not in the OED.  i got one hit on "espousing a story", but
haven't been able to check out the source.

>   _playwrighting_, n. playwriting: "Aristotle's dramatic structure
> was eventually adopted as the rules of playwrighting."  [100,000
> raw Googlits.]

couldn't this just be "playwrighting" 'acting as a playwright'. or,
as the OED has it, "The occupation or practice of a playwright; the
writing of plays."

> ...  _quality_, adj. of the greatest possible excellence:
> "Aristotle...sets forth the principles of quality poetry in order
> of importance."

a subsense ("= of a high cultural standard, esp. of newspapers") of
the OED's sense 13.

>   _ready_, v. intrans. to prepare: "The male chorus leader commands
> the men to ready for war."

in the OED, marked "U.S.", first cite 1967.

> ...  _tragic_, adj. self-pitying: "Myrrhine runs off without
> satisfying him, and Kinesias delivers a tragic soliloquy."

couldn't this be the OED's sense 2: "Resembling tragedy in respect of
its matter; relating to or expressing fatal or dreadful events;
connected with or excited by such events; sorrowful, sad, melancholy,
gloomy; = TRAGICAL a. 1."?

> ...  "The comic playwrights of ancient Greece...are well-known for
> taking advantage of metaphor and puns, or play-on-words."

i don't think this is an example of final rather than head
pluralization, or of zero pluralization, but rather of taking the
"play" of "play on words" to be a mass noun (as in "word-play")
rather than a count noun.  mass uses of "play on words" aren't hard
to find:

The youth group put on a production of Antshillvania - the story of
the prodical Ant, with much play on words (he wanted to be
independANT, and they killed ...
serenitydawn.blogspot.com/2005/07/frost-boy.html

many of the mass uses i found were of a different sense, not in the
OED, 'playing with words for rhetorical purposes, sloganeering,
misleading by words' -- possibly a combo of "play on words" and
"playing with words".

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)

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