and look you mock him not

[Michael H Covarrubias]

I know enough about football to watch a game with interest.  Not enough to talk
about statistics trades and drafts.  This might explain my confusion when I
read the following Yahoo! headline for a John Murphy story on the players
entering April's NFL draft.

"Accelerating to Mock 1"

It looked too obvious to be a misspelling.  And if in fact was supposed to be
"Mach" the headline would have nothing to do with football.  The article does
mention this coming weekend's Shrine Game.

Is "mock" conventionally used to mean such an exhibition as the game where new
players are given the chance to show their skills?  Such a specific intention
is not likely to make it into many dictionaries, but the OED does list one
definition: "Designating an examination set by a school, etc., which is
intended to give students practice for a particular public examination."

Stretch it a little and this could fit the headline.  The definition is marked
as "Chiefly Brit."

Michael

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

   English Language & Linguistics
   Purdue University
   mcovarru at purdue.edu

   web.ics.purdue.edu/~mcovarru
  <http://wishydig.blogspot.com>

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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