"bride-elect" -- an odd term

[Joel S. Berson]

"bride-elect" is in OED2, 5 instances from 1806
through 1896; "bride-to-be" once, 1936.  One is
"1864 London Society VI. 58 The bride elect, the
fiancé, the trousseau+she took under her most special charge."
"groom-elect" and "groom-to-be" do not appear.
"parents-in-law elect" once, 1922.

Joel

At 11/3/2007 05:54 PM, you wrote:
>"The Mikado" has the term "mother-in-law-elect", probably humorously but
>also probably on a basis of accepted terms like "bride-elect".
>
>To Gerald's point: "elect" at root means 'choose', or in this usage
>'chosen'. (The Eng. verb is from the Latin past participle; cf. "select" as
>an adjective, implying the "selected" cream of the crop.) In theology, "the
>elect" are not chosen by ballot, but by One Chooser! So somewhat similarly
>here.
>
>m a m
>
>PS: The spell checker in my Firefox browser, or maybe my Gmail, is
>underlining Wilson's "okay"! Anyone know how to turn it off?
>
>On 11/3/07, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > 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
> >
> >
>
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