[my] junk

[Ben Zimmer]

On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 12:30 AM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I don't think it has enough to be WOTY, but it's certainly the Word of
> the Week. It seems to be the most popular euphemism associated with TSA
> patdowns.

And speaking of which, "pat-down" is the subject of my latest Word
Routes column:

http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/2513

I take the phrasal verb "pat (someone) down" back to 1943, a decade
earlier than what OED3 currently has.

--bgz

--
Ben Zimmer
http://benzimmer.com/

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