"bully pulpit"

[ronbutters at AOL.COM]

"bully" still survives (sort of) in its original sense in the frozen expression "Bully for you!" Otherwise, my intuition is that nobody who was born after about 1899 says "bully" in the sense 'great' or 'powerful'; those people are not linguistically influential. Therefore, it is not surprising that most people interpret "bully pulpit" as a noun-noun construction. Most people are not "confused," they just speak 21st Century American English. Or so historical linguistics teacheth.
.................
JLighter wrote [snipped]:

> But others thought it ["bully pulpit"] meant that the Prez has power to bully just about
> anyone into doing almost anything he says ...
>
> The confusion is apparently so frequent that Wackipedia has a note ...
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