"terminally" = utterly; extraordinarily

[Dave Wilton]

I take "terminally silly" and "terminally stupid" to be hyperbole; someone
so silly/stupid that they die from it.

"Terminally insidious impact," on the other hand, is just misuse of the
word.



-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
Laurence Horn
Sent: Monday, June 29, 2009 12:48 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: "terminally" = utterly; extraordinarily

At 7:51 PM +0100 6/29/09, Damien Hall wrote:
>JL quoted Brian Hanley this:
>
>'2008  Brian Hanley  _Planning for Conflict in the Twenty-First Century_
>(Greenwood) 126: Another illustration of the terminally insidious impact on
>French society of the Great War.'
>
>and said it was a straight-faced use of _terminally_ to mean 'utterly',
>'extraordinarily'. But do we know that for sure? The context doesn't make
>it clear, to me at least, since arguably the Great War _did_ have a
>terminal impact on many aspects of French (high) society. I'm no French
>historian, but I believe it's true that the Great War made France take a
>major step away from being ruled by its aristocracy (even though it had
>been a republic since 1875).
>
>If we accept this, it is possible that this _terminally_ could be taken in
>its literal meaning. We then have to imagine French society being eaten
>away from the inside, or something, in order for _insidious_ to have the
>desired effect; but that's not much of a leap to make. Is it?
>

It's certainly expanded well beyond its original borders (as limned
by the OED).  There are, for example, 1650 raw g-hits for "terminally
silly", none of which I venture have anything directly to do with
incurable illness.

LH

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