"casualty"

[Shapiro, Fred]

Jon,

Doesn't sense 2.c. in OED correspond to the meaning you are referring to?

Fred Shapiro



________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Jonathan Lighter [wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM]
Sent: Wednesday, October 13, 2010 3:18 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: "casualty"

OED does not recognize the usage, very misleading and to be deplored on that
basis, that equates "casualty" with "person killed."

Here is a perfect example. Canetti quotes Albert Speer, who was quoting
Hitler from memory.  I don't know the denotation of the translated German
word, but English is English:

1979 Elias Canetti _The Conscience of Words_ (N.Y.: Seabury Press) 153: That
will at least be a worthy monument to our dead in the World War. The name of
every one of our 1,800,000 casualties will be carved in granite!

JL
--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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