Misinterpretation of name of a Civil War bullet

[Jonathan Lighter]

Nice try, Larry.

But no.

The writer may have been trying to say that a man shooting a rifle loaded
with a Minie ball might fire accurately at 250 yards, but the ball could
still be deadly at 500. That may be an understatement:  Minie balls were
.58-caliber, conical, and made of soft lead; in other words, huge dumdum
bullets.

JL

On Mon, Aug 1, 2011 at 9:08 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Misinterpretation of name of a Civil War bullet
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Aug 1, 2011, at 8:40 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>
> > On Mon, Aug 1, 2011 at 3:50 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
> wrote:
> >> I think an argument could be made either way.
> >
> > You can construct an argument in defense of the claim that it makes
> > sense to state that a weapon merely "effective" in combat at 250 yards
> > is "deadly" in combat at 500 yards, instead of the other way around?
> >
> > Do it, then.
>
> "effective" = 'achieving the intended purpose', in this case hitting the
> intended target
> "deadly" = 'resulting in death', not necessarily of the intended target
>
> My example in the earlier part of the excerpted e-mail was intended to
> illustrate this possibility.  Let's see…yes,
>
> "If I had some varmints in my back yard and decided to eliminate them by
> dropping a tactical nuclear device on the critters, wiping them out along
> with my house, the neighborhood, and half the city, the bomb would certainly
> be deadly, but would it be effective?"
>
>
>
> LH
>
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>



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