etymological = "semantic"

[Charles Doyle]

My literature students often record their perception that I seldom talk about anything but etymology. I'm almost certain that for many of them, "etymology" stands as a sort of metonymy or synecdoche for philology, close reading, linguistics in all its aspects. Might that sense of the term have become somewhat general in the speech and writing of the non-young?

--Charlie
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---- Original message ----
>Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2007 14:38:30 -0400
>From: Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>

On 7/5/07, Cohen, Gerald Leonard <gcohen at umr.edu> wrote:
>>
>> > From: American Dialect Society on behalf of Laurence Horn
>> >
>> > At 10:46 AM -0700 7/5/07, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

>> > > 2007 _New Yorker_ (July 2) 25: [T]he gang of uptown "girls" (this breed of woman seeks not only cosmetic but etymological eternal youth)...function as a kind of pedicured Greek chorus.
>> > >
>> > > I'm not even sure what "etymological" eternal youth would mean.
>> >
>> > or maybe "literal", now that "literal" no longer means 'literal'?
>>
>> Yes. Greek "etymos" means "true," and so the writer seems to be speaking of *truly* eternal youth --- eternal youth in its truest sense.
>
>I think Gerry's guilty of the etymological fallacy!
>
>--Ben Zimmer

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