ancestor = "descendant"

[Jonathan Lighter]

I doubt that _Casablanca_ has much to do with it. The line is ironic, but it does not mean "mildly or pleasantly surprised."

  Furthermore, many of the people using the word in that way wouldn't be caught dead watching a black and white movie.

  JL

FRITZ JUENGLING <juengling_fritz at SALKEIZ.K12.OR.US> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: FRITZ JUENGLING
Subject: Re: ancestor = "descendant"
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"I am shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here." I think
part of that quote, i.e. 'shocked, (shocked)' has now entered mainstream
use and for many has nothing to do with the movie. To what degree does
Capt. Renault's agree with the semantic drift, if at all? Maybe the
phrase has just been used so much that it has just become watered down,
just like the bland 'awesome' (which now means anything but 'awesome'--I
was in Best Buy a while back and one of the employees asked if he could
help me. "No, I'm just browsing" to which he replied 'awesome'. I
never thought that when I'm suffling thru Cd's it's awesome, but to each
his own).
Fritz J

>>> wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM 3/1/2007 2:39 PM >>>
Oh, Barbara, pleease do.

BTW, more semanticdrift: newspersons and others are increasingly
using "shocked" (which for most of us has strong overtones of
disturbance and dismay) to mean "surprised" in neutral or even positive
contexts.

More of tomorrow's Inglish.

JL

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