"bury the lede"

[Doug_Harris]

This has been discussed before -- that the term 'lede' is common newspaper
parlance for the 'lead' of a story, to avoid, as you suggested, confusion
with another sense of the latter ('lead').
dh


 Charles Doyle
Sent: Monday, August 25, 2008 7:42 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: "bury the lede"

I noticed this in today's syndicated column by Leonard Pitts, regarding the
recent televised exchange with McCain: "In answering the abortion question .
. . one could argue that he [Obama]--to use a journalist term--buried the
lede."

Including various forms of the verb, the phrase gets some 22,000 Google
hits, with a comparable number for "bury the lead"--which was surely the
prototype expression, "lead" in the sense of 'leading news story'?  Was
"lede" substituted to avoid confusion with "lead" [lEd], the base metal?

No entry for "lede" (in that sense) in the OED.

--Charlie

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