"the financial equivalent of Hurricane Katrina"

[Baker, John]

        The meme seems to be "the X equivalent of Hurricane Katrina."
"Equivalent of Hurricane Katrina" gets 3670 Googlits.


John Baker


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
Of James Harbeck
Sent: Wednesday, November 19, 2008 9:40 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: "the financial equivalent of Hurricane Katrina"

I lately received a letter from the president of my graduate alma mater,
Tufts University, which referred to the current economic crisis as "the
financial equivalent of Hurricane Katrina."

Curious as to how common that turn of phrase is, I Googled it. I got
143 hits, though it only displayed 22 (the rest were "very similar").
But all 22 included that exact phrase. While that may not seem like so
many, the odds of a six-word phrase being repeated even once on the web
are quite low. (The seven-word "how common that turn of phrase is,"
which seems a natural enough phrase, gets no hits at all, for instance.
The five-word "gets no hits at all" gets 99, of which only 28 display.)

So this seems to be a meme with some legs. I expect to see it again.

James Harbeck.

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