Headlines roll by; heads will roll by

[Matthew Gordon]

Yeah, maybe I was being too generous, but I was thinking "Don't just buy one
cup, buy the whole pound" or something.


On 4/7/08 1:00 PM, "Dennis R Preston" <preston at MSU.EDU> wrote:

> I'm having trouble getting the ambiguity from the "the." "Buy a pound" and
> "by the pound" seem pretty fixed to me.
>
> dInIs
>
> Matthew Gordon writes:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Matthew Gordon <gordonmj at MISSOURI.EDU>
>> Subject:      Re: Headlines roll by; heads will roll by
>> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> --
>>
>> On a related note, I was in a Dunkin Donuts this weekend and noticed a
>> hand-written sign that read:
>> "Whole bean coffee
>> buy the pound
>> $13.99"
>> or something like that. The wording and layout made it ambiguous enough that
>> either 'buy' or 'by' was possible.
>>
>>
>> On 4/7/08 11:57 AM, "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET> wrote:
>>
>>> NYTimes headline, today, columns 1-3, front page (New England Edition):
>>>
>>> When Foreigners by the Factory: 2 Towns, Opposite Paths.
>>>
>>> America for Sale: The Outsiders.
>>>
>>> Joel
>>>
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>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
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>
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