sherpas, sherpa guide

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 12:43 PM, Herb Stahlke <hfwstahlke at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> In an MSNBC report on the Obama-Netanyahu meetings a reported said,
> "The sherpas prepared well..," presumably referring to the staffs of
> the two leaders.

NOAD has the definition, "a civil servant or diplomat who undertakes preparatory
political work prior to a summit conference." Random House and Encarta also
include this sense. Safire's Political Dictionary dates it back to a July 1955
NY Times article about a Khrushchev-Eisenhower meeting.


--Ben Zimmer

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