Seeing

[George Thompson]

In the absence of an indication that the first "seeing" could be replaced by "sighting", "observing", "encountering" -- which might be by indicating a place or circumstance where the chap was sighted: "Azul has been seeing this boy Ramon for the past three months about campus [or "when he went to the gas station" or the like)]" -- I think I would take it as meaning "dating".

I would need to read the entire paragraph to be sure haw I would interpret it.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.

----- Original Message -----
From: Rick Barr <rickbarremail at gmail.com>
Date: Saturday, June 5, 2010 10:59 am
Subject: Seeing
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU

> In Andrew Porter's short story "Azul" (first published in *One Story*
> in
> 2006, later collected in the book *The Theory of Light and Matter*), the
> narrator says this in the first paragraph: "Azul has been seeing this
> boy
> Ramon for the past three months." At the end of the paragraph, the narrator
> says that Azul "and Ramon have been seeing each other romantically for
> almost a month."
>
> I thought the first "see," in context, made it clear that Azul and Ramon
> were having a romantic relationship. But then we are told that, after
> two
> months of non-romantic "seeing," a romantic "seeing" began.
>
> Does that sound odd to anyone else? Or am I alone in jumping to the
> conclusion that the first "seeing" (because it said "seeing *each other*")
> implied a romantic relationship?
>
> -- Rick
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org