Re: [ADS-L] "empath" as lexicographic lacuna

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

I see. It is a small semantic shift from "paranormal" to "abnormal"--enough 
so that maybe we are just seeing a low-level expansion that the lexicographers 
just haven't caught up with yet. The difference is so subtle that a 
lexicographer could be excused for thinking, "well, this is just a slight metaphoric 
extension, not a real separate submeaning." Like calling chicken "meat," I guess, 
or selling shrimp and filet mignon from the same counter in a small 
supermarket.


In a message dated 11/28/08 1:37:16 PM, laurence.horn at YALE.EDU writes:


> At 1:09 PM -0500 11/28/08, RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:
> >Y'all are looking in the wrong places. NOAD has had this from the beginning
> >(2001):
> >
> >
> >em*path ... n. (chiefly in science fiction) a
> >person with the paranormal ability to apprehend the
> >mental or emotional state of another individual.
> >
> 
> But that still doesn't automatically extend to the usage in the
> Michael Connelly novel; FBI agent Rachel Walling is not crediting a
> sizable minority of her fellow-agents with any paranormal ability,
> just with having empathy toward victims of the crimes they're
> investigating.  And the same goes for the acrostic clue, although
> that could evoke the above definition.  Connelly's "empath" could
> even be a separate back-formation from "empathy" or "empathic" from
> the science-fiction sense rather than a bleaching of the paranormal
> component.  I haven't gone through the google pages to see if it's
> used regularly to mean just someone with (an unusual amount of)
> empathy.
> 
> LH
> 
> >In a message dated 11/24/08 11:08:44 AM, laurence.horn at YALE.EDU writes:
> >
> >
> >>  Acrostic spoiler ahead...
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
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> >>
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> >>
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> >>
> >  >
> >  >
> >  >
> >>
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> >>
> >>
> >>  Word P in yesterday's NYT Acrostic is clued as "One who knows how you
> >>  feel", and I inferred  the correct answer, _EMPATH_, partly by virtue
> >>  of an instance of synchronicity that points to an odd omission:  In
> >>  _The Narrows_, a 2004 novel by Michael Connelly I'm currently
> >>  reading, the term is applied to those FBI agents who take their cases
> >>  personally.  I was curious about when the word was first attested,
> >>  and to my surprise _empath_ is unlisted in either the (online) OED or
> >>  AHD4, despite the fact that it has both a wikipedia entry (albeit
> >>  largely devoted to the science-fiction ESP-y variety of empath as
> >>  opposed to the more general sense invoked by Connelly's FBI agent and
> >>  the Acrostic designers) and "about 730,000" raw g-hits for the word.
> >>
> >>  LH
> >>
> >>  ------------------------------------------------------------
> >>  The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> >
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> 




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