"bride-elect" -- an odd term

[Wilson Gray]

They both sound okay to me, G. My WAG is that they became
unfashionable after the passage of my lost youth, when "-elect" was
considered quite classy, very NYTimes-y, and may (or may not) be
becoming fashionable, again.

-Wilson

On 11/3/07, Cohen, Gerald Leonard <gcohen at umr.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Cohen, Gerald Leonard" <gcohen at UMR.EDU>
> Subject:      "bride-elect" -- an odd  term
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I'm sometimes amazed at how a term I never heard before turns out to be frequent, or at least not infrequent.  I just came across "bride-elect" (= bride-to-be) in the wedding-announcements of a recent issue of my local newspaper.
> Google shows 94,600 instances of this. "Groom-elect" has 14,800 hits, a term I had never  seen or heard before either.
>
> In any case, both terms strike me as odd.  It's as if the family and friends got together and cast ballots for who should be selected for the marriage.
>
> Gerald Cohen
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
                                              -Sam'l Clemens

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