"advocate for"
Joel S. Berson
Berson at ATT.NET
Fri Sep 18 17:06:12 UTC 2009
At 9/18/2009 09:28 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>Inglish synonym for "campaigner against." This has been around for years,
>of course, but this ex. seems especially egregious:
>
>2009 Lauren Collins in _New Yorker_ (Sept. 21) 38: "Anyway, I got up,
>because I had to, and once I got on the airplane I collapsed."...[Cindy]
>McCain has decided to become an advocate for the disorder.
Unless McCain is really advocating for additional disorders caused by
people collapsing on airplanes?
Didn't I write something once here about similar cases, of writers
saying "for" something that was the undesirable alternative? Can't
remember more than that.
Joel
------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
More information about the Ads-l
mailing list