and look you mock him not

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:27 AM -0500 1/19/07, Alice Faber wrote:
>Michael H Covarrubias wrote:
>>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."
>
>The most common use of "mock" in such a context is in the phrase "mock
>draft". Commentators take the order in which teams will draft,
>determined by their standing the previous season, and incorporate their
>knowledge of each team's strengths and weaknesses as well of those of
>the players available to be drafted. Using this information, they
>predict which players will be drafted by which teams. So, all you're
>dealing with is a typical headline writer's cheesy pun.
>
I'm on board with Alice's reading, except that I'd say it's not
*that* cheesy a pun, all things considered.

LH

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