another "moment" for WOTY consideration

[Jonathan Lighter]

Ben, our posts crossed. A comment at your site does claim (plausibly) that
"Whisky Tango Foxtrot, Oscar" was current during the VN war.

JL

On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 11:10 AM, Benjamin Zimmer <
bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: another "moment" for WOTY consideration
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 10:56 AM, Mark Mandel wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 7:13 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
> >
> >>  From Arianna Huffington's argument that Joe Biden should resign and
> >> become the point person for opposition to the war in Afghanistan:
> >>
> >>
>
> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/why-joe-biden-should-resi_b_320929.html
> >>
> >> Well, Obama has gotten that request, but it wasn't a "Whiskey Tango
> >> Foxtrot moment" for him after all.
> >>
> >> I haven't encountered Whiskey Tango Foxtrot moments before, at least
> >> not by name.
> >
> > I've seen "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot", though not AFAIR modifying "moment",
> for
> > several years at least.
>
> I talk about the history of "WTF (moment)" in this Language Log post, tied
> to
> the new edition of Jesse's book:
>
> http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1766
>
> Some of the commenters discuss "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot," but having that
> modify
> "moment" is new to me too.
>
>
> --Ben Zimmer
>
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