semantic shift: "shrapnel"

[Wilson Gray]

To me, too.

-Wilson

On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 2:26 PM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      semantic shift: "shrapnel"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> CNN reported this morning that Dr. Sanjay Gupta, in Haiti, operated on a
> "12-year-old girl with shrapnel in her brain."
>
> Much later CNN identified the "shrapnel" as "a small piece of concrete."
>
> Usage note: OED 1989 defines shrapnel (in the broad and now usual sense) as
> "fragments from shells or bomb."  The extension to bits of metal hurled out
> in any kind of explosion (say, that of a grain elevator) would also seem
> normal to me, though clearly "literary."  CNN, however,  is using the
> word with no suggestion of metal or explosion, and this seems to me very
> strange.
>
> JL
>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
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--
-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

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