another query (re catch phrases)

[Dan Goncharoff]

Neither the "pulling strings" or "comforting" seems to me to be the same
as using "reaching out" as the verb form of the older concept of
"outreach", which has a long-established meaning in the business world
-- making contact with clients or potential clients.

DanG

On 6/17/2010 8:15 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society<ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn<laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: another query (re catch phrases)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 5:55 PM -0400 6/17/10, Wilson Gray wrote:
>
>> I don't get out much, anymore. So, the language may very well have
>> evolved in ways that I'm unaware of, but, IAC, I find it hard to
>> imagine using either of these in business correspondence.
>>
>> I'm familiar with _reach out to_ only from TV-cop-show jargon, wherein
>> it's always used WRT string-pulling. The cops "reach out to" their
>> police-academy classmates and former partners who have transferred
>> out,  been promoted, have retired, or whoever in order to have a favor
>> done.
>> "I was going to have Smith transferred back to walking a beat, but he
>> reached out to the assistant chief, an academy buddy of his dad."
>>
>>
> Right, I'm familiar with that too from the same type of sources, but
> I've never thought of reaching out to in that sense--pulling strings,
> as you say, or using the old blue network, whatever--as being closely
> related to the reaching out in the sense of comforting (with the
> implication of emotional energy involved, going out on a limb, etc.)
> that we have in the "thank you for reaching out" formula.  The latter
> strikes me as a bit treacly (if it's not purely formulaic), the way
> "thank you for sharing" became before it became virtually unusable
> without intended sarcasm.
>
> LH
>
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