Whet the hell is this?, pts. I & II

[victor steinbok]

Well, it does /allow/ for another interpretation. Patchogue is close
to the south shore of Long Island, almost exactly opposite Stony
Brook, which is on the north shore. It is possible that the idea of a
stage coach robbery in that area seemed so ludicrous, that the writer
might have been saying, "Well, we have idiots around here, but not
land pirates," mocking the alleged victim. It's a stretch, I suppose.

The contraband version also makes some sense. The editor might be
suggesting one kind of criminal activity that he knows about
(smugglers), but not the other (land pirates). The contrast need not
be between land and sea, but between two types of criminal enterprise,
one of which is known to exist (in abundance).

VS-)

On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 5:26 PM, George Thompson
<george.thompson at nyu.edu> wrote:
>
> It still seems to me that the editor is contrasting land pirates with water pirates, which isn't easily supported by the OED's definitions, nor by the on-line dictdionaries VS cites.

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