"to bilk" with object not a person

Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM
Thu Sep 30 22:05:40 UTC 2010


That doesn't matter.  One set of grammatical objects is human, the other
ain't.

JL

On Thu, Sep 30, 2010 at 5:01 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "to bilk" with object not a person
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Thu, Sep 30, 2010 at 4:52 PM, Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Isn't "bilking your lodgings" just another way of saying "bilking your
> > landlord"? I think you will find that every non-person ends up being
> > an institution representing people.
>
> Quite so.
>
> --
> -Wilson
> –––
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"––a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> –Mark Twain
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



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

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



More information about the Ads-l mailing list