"Avail" = "advantage"?

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Feb 28, 2008, at 8:04 AM, Wilson Gray wrote:

> Clearly, I ne[e]d to get out more! :-)
>
> -Wilson
>
> On 2/28/08, Arnold M. Zwicky <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu> wrote:
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
>> Subject:      Re: "Avail" = "advantage"?
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> On Feb 27, 2008, at 8:35 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>>
>>> From Slashdot:
>>>
>>> http://books.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/27/1551206
>>>
>>> "... more UNIX references for those willing and able to _take avail
>>> of_ the UNIX kernel underlying the operating system ..."
>>
>> believe it or not, this is an *old* sense -- perhaps the original
>> sense -- of the noun "avail"...

hey, i didn't recall having heard or seen it before myself.  and the
OED thought it was obsolete.  there's no reason to expect you to have
been aware of it.

arnold

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