respectively

[Jonathan Lighter]

"They" say this on Fox and CNN all the time, and have for a long time.

I noticed it because it made me wonder whether I knew what "respectively"
meant. I even looked it up.

SWAG: this is now the usual non-academic meaning of the word.

JL

On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 11:11 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: respectively
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 8:55 AM -0600 10/4/10, Victor Steinbok wrote:
> >  ... meaning "in the order given" (or, "in that order"):
> >
> >http://bit.ly/bDOhPp
> >>While Milwaukee was ranked 11th poorest in 2008, the new data showed
> >>the city's poverty level reached 27 percent as of 2009, trailing only
> >>Detroit, Cleveland and Buffalo, N.Y., respectively.
> >
> >The only conclusion I can reach from this statement is that Detroit,
> >Cleveland and Buffalo are the first, second and third cities,
> >respectively, in terms of highest poverty levels. But, in the sentence
> >above, the three cities are not paired with anything explicit to earn
> >the "respectively" label.
> >
> >VS-)
> >
> Agreed.  Presumably someone thought that since "respectively" sort of
> means "in that order" in some contexts, it can replace "in that
> order" in all contexts, including ones in which the pairing requires
> unpacking what's implicit, as you do in your gloss.  Why use three
> words when one word that means almost the same thing can be used?
>
> LH
>
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