pejoration of "stuff?"

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On May 24, 2007, at 5:43 AM, Doug Harris wrote:

> ... 'Reminds me of the two reasons I always cited for not having
> parented:
> 1) Matchbook covers warned me, back when I was a smoker, to "keep
> away from
>    children."
> 2) Since then, medicine bottles have presented to me the same
> warning. I've
>    been pretty observant.

this one is systematic.  a linguist's discussion:

Sadock, Jerrold M.  1974.  Read at your own risk: Syntactic and
semantic horrors you can find in your medicine chest.  CLS 10.599-607.

(In Case of Fire, Break Glass)

by the way, do we have non-playful cites of the verb "parent" used as
the Other Doug does above, to mean 'have children'  (intransitive),
rather than (transitive) 'act as a parent to' (usually in the noun
"parenting")?

arnold

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