gamesmanship = 'sportsmanship'

Victor Steinbok aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM
Fri Sep 10 18:07:30 UTC 2010


  Not related directly, but yet another "-manship": A line on Futurama
(along with the usual assortment of self-referential puns) referred to
kissing as a "display of tonguemanship".

If anyone needs a more specific reference, I don't know the episode
title, but it was the episode that involved "rebirthing" of all major
characters and robot versions of Fry and Leela. The line occurs early in
the episode, before the big crash.

     VS-)

On 9/10/2010 1:17 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>   At 1:02 PM -0400 9/10/10, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>> 2002 Ruth Glancy _Thematic Guide to British Poetry_ (Westport, Conn.:
>> Greenwood Press) 265: The famous old expression that the Battle of Waterloo
>> was won on the playing fields of Eton summed up the long-held belief that
>> the principles of gamesmanship and good manners taught in the schools of
>> young gentlemen were all that were needed to defeat the barbarous enemy.
>>
>> The association of "gamesmanship" with "good manners" and "young gentlemen"
>> in opposition to the "barbarous enemy,"  as well as the general context of
>> the passage, scotches the idea that what's meant is the usual sense of
>> "gamesmanship."
>>
>> In 2002  Prof. Glancy was Associate Professor of English at Concordia
>> University in Alberta.
>>
> And with this innovative ameliorated sense in mind, Ms. Glancy would
> be less likely to commit the malapropism of the basketball announcer
> who commented yesterday on the "gamesmanshit" of the two coaches
> quibbling about the outcome of the 1972 Olympics medal game.
>
> I see the OED has only one entry for "gamesmanship", 'Skill in
> winning games, esp. by means that barely qualify as legitimate'.  The
> last cite at the entry contrasts the two traits from Jon's  subject
> line:
>
> 1967 Times 8 Apr. 13/6 Sportsmanship..is a switched-off word that has
> lost ground to gamesmanship.
>
> LH

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