Storms are breaking

[Joel S. Berson]

At 9/14/2009 06:19 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>I think he goofed, but the real horror is that I hadn't noticed till I read
>this twice.
>
>It must be because we think of "clouds" breaking, and storms issue from
>clouds (except at the beginning of _The Last Wave_).
>
>But in a sense it's also an auto-antonym, or could be seen that way. The
>presence of the word "past" makes it hard to misinterpret, though.

Yes, and I understand it as "break up".  It may be that Obama's
"goof" was simply not sayin "up".

Joel


>JL
>
>On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 3:26 PM, Geoffrey Nathan <geoffnathan at wayne.edu>wrote:
>
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Geoffrey Nathan <geoffnathan at WAYNE.EDU>
> > Subject:      Storms are breaking
> >
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > CNN is quoting the President this afternoon as saying:
> >
> > 'We can be confident that the storms of the past two years are beginning to
> > break.'
> >
> > That struck me as odd, since that's not what I think he meant,
> > so I looked it up in the Cobuild Dictionary Online, where it says
> >
> > verb 'If the weather breaks or a storm breaks , it suddenly becomes rainy
> > or stormy after a period of sunshine.
> > I've been waiting for the weather to break...' V
> >
> > so, is 'the storm is breaking' one of those auto-antonyms?  Or did Obama's
> > speechwriter goof?
> >
> > Geoff
> >
> > Geoffrey S. Nathan
> > Faculty Liaison, C&IT
> > and Associate Professor, Linguistics Program
> > +1 (313) 577-1259 (C&IT)
> > +1 (313) 577-8621 (English/Linguistics)
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