more Millionaire Matchmaker novelties

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Sat Apr 16 03:04:57 UTC 2011


On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 7:22 PM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> single   adj. not in a monogamous unmarried sexual relationship [Cf. OED 8b
> & 8c, neither of which quite fit]: Â "Have you ever been married?" "No. Have
> you?" "No." "So how long have you been single?" "About a year and a half.
> How long have you been single?" [Too difficult to search for.]
>

Has the expansion of this meaning driven _divorced_ out of colloquial
speech? I've noticed for dekkids that people that I would call
"divorced [and not remarried]" generally refer to themselves as
"single," which, IME, means - or used to mean - "unmarried now and was
never in the past." On TV's various "reality" shows, at least,
"single" means, essentially, "I'm willing to cheat on whatever fool
I'm currently balling" and not much else.

--
-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



More information about the Ads-l mailing list