delibility

[Laurence Horn]

At 12:29 AM -0500 11/16/09, Wilson Gray wrote:
>Sigh! I miss the indelible pencils of my pre-adolescence, when every
>English-speaking child understood intuitively that "indelible" wasn't
>merely a weakening of "delible."

Right; it's as if Fouts had warned "Careful about tossing your match
into that empty oil barrel--it's not just inflammable, it's
*flammable*."

LH

>Well, it was more likely the case
>that only a lexicographer had any idea that a word "delible" even
>existed. And I wouldn't even be surprised to discover that that
>announcer had no idea, either.
>
>-Wilson
>
>On Sun, Nov 15, 2009 at 10:58 PM, Laurence Horn
><laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>-----------------------
>>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>  Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>>  Subject:      delibility
>>
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>   From one of the CBS announcers of today's Jets-Jaguars football game,
>>  after Jets' quarterback Mark Sanchez is sacked in the first quarter
>>  and goes down hard:
>>
>>  "Those type of hits leave an indelible--and sometimes a *delible* mark."
>>
>>  Evident a delible mark is like an indelible one only more so.
>>
>>  LH
>>
>>  ------------------------------------------------------------
>>  The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>
>
>
>--
>-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
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org