new specif. sense: "abuse"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Everybody who's ever watched Abbott & Costello knows that Lou takes a hell
of a lot of abuse from Bud - mostly verbal.  It's right there on the
screen. The following sentence suggests, however, that a more specific, more
sinister sense of "abuse" is becoming fully lexicalized. (There's no
contextual stage-setting and the idea is not developed further.):

2008 David Thomson_Have You Seen...?: A Personal Introduction to 1,000
Films_ (London: Penguin) 3: Deep down, we know that Bud has abused Lou - it
is the secret in their films never quite arrived at.

It's a review of _Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein_, number one on
Thomson's alphabetical hit parade - chosen, as he admits, to get the book
off to a "wilder" start than would number two, _Abe Lincoln in Illinois_.

JL

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

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