semantic drift: "officer" PLUS bonus anecdote AND....

[Gordon, Matthew J.]

As a semantic motivation for "roll model" how 'bout "he's my roll model b/c I wanna roll like he does" a la "that's how I roll" which has lately become all the rage. I don't really think this is a likely reasoning for most exx. of "roll model" but maybe someday...


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society on behalf of Arnold M. Zwicky
Sent: Sat 4/12/2008 9:02 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject:      Re: semantic drift: "officer" PLUS bonus anecdote AND....
 
On Apr 12, 2008, at 6:48 AM, Doug Harris wrote:

> They (today's young anchors) believe Ted Baxter is a roll model, not
> a parody.

role/roll is in Brians (with "role model" specifically mentioned), but
not in the ecdb (because we can't see a semantic motivation for the
substitutions in either direction).

arnold

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