"write," n. = "something intended to be read; a writing."

[Wilson Gray]

Well, we could try to expand the use of  "writ," as in "Holy Writ,"
Catholicspeak for "Holy Scripture," or as in "writ of habeas corpus."

(There's a bit of irony in the continuing use of the four-letter
"Anglo-Saxonism" by Catholicism, whereas it's Protestantism that has
switched to the Latinism. That was the case in my  church-going youth,
anyway.)

-Wilson

On 9/22/06, Arnold M. Zwicky <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "write," n. = "something intended to be read; a writing."
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Sep 22, 2006, at 1:43 PM, Jon Lighter wrote:
>
> > "Indis[cr]iminantly" isn't in OED at all.  Or anywhere so far as I
> > can tell.
>
> somewhere i have a collection of -ate/-ant exchanges.  they're
> encouraged by spontaneous nasalization in -ate and by low levels of
> nasalization in unaccented -ant.
>
> >   And the OED cites (from 1825) seem generally to confirm my
> > impression.  Early exx. treat it as something you "have" or "take,"
> > and OED defines this as "an act of perusal; a spell of
> > reading" (like "a good sleep" = a spell of sleeping).  Modern usage
> > (cited from 1958, app. in Britain), applies it to the thing read:
> > "That's a good/bad/etc. read."
> >
> >   I suggest the two nuances be separated in the next revision.
>
> i was going to suggest that myself.
>
> arnold
>
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--
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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