Heard on The Judges: "re-girlfriend" n.

[Wilson Gray]

Curses! Horned again! Must you always publish the findings of your
research?! ;-)

-Wilson

All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Mark Twain


On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 7:17 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Heard on The Judges: "re-girlfriend" n.
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 4:15 PM -0500 11/10/08, Wilson Gray wrote:
>>Late-twenty-ish, white female speaker:
>>
>>"He told me that he wanted to move in with me because he couldn't
>>stand his old girlfriend's - well, _re-girlfriend's_, now - children.
>>
>>
>>The "he" in question, after confidencing the speaker into thinking
>>that he was going to dump his pswaydo-family for her, got her to buy
>>him a newer pickup, so that he would be able to get to work. It turned
>>out that he had been fired from his job and, once that he had the
>>truck, he went back to his old girlfriend and their children.
>>
>>"Re-girlfriend" was a nice effort on the part of the suckered woman to
>>come up with a nonce-term to describe the situation in as few words as
>>possible, IMO.
>>
> I wonder (without checking google) whether "re-wife" and "re-husband"
> already exist, for someone one has remarried.  After checking, I see
> an urbandictionary.com listing for the former.  A bit tricky to check
> because of all the "Re: Wife" etc. sites.
>
> LH
>
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