journey

[ronbutters at AOL.COM]

Well gee golly! OED doesn't say merely "journey," it also says "passage." Why isn't Shirley's journey just a passage through life? The inference that her journey is 'interesting' derives from the context of utterance, not the meaning of "journey."
------Original Message------
From: Jonathan Lighter
Sender: ADS-L
To: ADS-L
ReplyTo: ADS-L
Subject: [ADS-L] journey
Sent: Jul 21, 2010 8:21 AM

OED includes this cliche' under 3b "fig., esp. the 'pilgrimage' or passage
through life."  But I think the def. needs to be tweaked to cover the media
throwaway uses like the following.

2010 _CNN Newsroom_ (July 25) (CNN TV): This is the story of the journey of
Shirley Sherrod....

It means "interesting life"  ("You've had quite a journey!") with no sense
of a "pilgrimage," which, of course, has a destination.  Today's "journeys"
are more interesting if undirected. No following "from...to" which would
make it more clearly figurative.  Note that "trip" is infrequently used this
way.



JL



--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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