"-free" goes neutral
Laurence Horn
laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Sat Feb 13 21:49:24 UTC 2010
At 4:20 PM -0500 2/13/10, Wilson Gray wrote:
>"-Free" might have have gone that way a lot earlier, if the Nazi
>_Judenrein_, roughly, "cleaned, cleared of Jews," hadn't been given
>the space-saving and peppier translation, "Jew-free," by some random
>war-correspondent.
>
>-Wilson
Brings to mind how Milosevic and friends a while back cast a whole
new light on "cleansing".
LH
>
>On Sat, Feb 13, 2010 at 12:17 PM, Jonathan Lighter
><wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>-----------------------
>> Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster: Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject: "-free" goes neutral
>>
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> We've all bought products that promise to get other products "stain-free,"
>> "odor-free," "germ-free," "gunk-free," etc. "-Free" implies that something
>> quite undesirable has been removed. You are now "free of" that obviously
>> undesirable thing.
>>
>> Thirty or so ago years ago, a freshman turned in a theme about racism. In it
>> he used the phrases "Jew-free" and "black-free." I decided I needed to have
>> a little chat with the lad.
>>
>> As it turned out - and it was pretty clear from his theme - he had not meant
>> to imply that being "Jew-" or "black-free" was a good thing. In fact, the
>> opposite. However, his sense of language was so limited that he had not
>> perceived what (I assume) we do, that "-free" means "good riddance."
>>
>> Last night CNN (n.b., not Fox) reported that Patrick Kennedy would not seek
>> reelection. The panel at the bottom of the screen read "Congress to be
>> Kennedy-free." The anchor explained that his retirement would mean "the
>> first Kennedy-free Congress in fifty years."
>>
>> Now if we may rise above partisan politics for a moment, I submit that CNN
>> did not intend to suggest "good riddance" when it spoke of a "Kennedy-free
>> Congress" any more than that student (now old enough to be some journalist's
>> father) was a neo-Nazi.
>> It meant "a Congress without a Kennedy."
>>
>> Google summons up too many "Kennedy-free" hits to examine, but wherever they
>> come from, and whatever they mean, CNN must think the affix is neutrally
>> descriptive.
>>
>> JL
>>
>> --
>> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> 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
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