Reversed "avowal"

[George Thompson]

This is the headline of the story at the upper left corner of the front page
of today's Times, laid out thus:
Letter counters
hacking avowals
from News Corp

I read it several times before I could interpret it otherwise than "People
who count letters have hacked avowals issued by the News Corp."
This is due to the fact that I am more and more receiving emails from forces
for righteousness who want me to email my congressman, &c. and demand
action.  They offer a form email, but urge me to write my own.  I send the
form email, because I suppose that itl won't be read, but merely glanced at
by a staff member, who is a letter counter, and will check it off as for or
against.
That fact, plus simple-mindedness, I suppose.
Those of you who see the Times only on-line (and aren't simple-minded)
weren't misled.

GAT

On Wed, Aug 17, 2011 at 4:45 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:

> Headline, NYTimes, Aug.17, page 1, col. 1, and repeated inside:
>
> "Letter counters hacking avowals from News Corp."
>
> The letter was written by Clive Goodman, un-rehired former royal
> correspondent for the News of the World, who is disputing claims by
> various News Corp. executives and editors that they knew nothing.
>
> This "avowal" is certainly not an "I do" (or "I did") hacking -- the
> OED definition is "An act of avowing; acknowledgement, declaration;
> unconstrained admission or confession" -- but rather a denial of
> hacking.  (They certainly did not admit or confess; even "hacking
> *declaration*" would tend towards the incorrect meaning.)  It is
> perhaps their avowal that they knew nothing .  Still,
>
> "Letter counters hacking denials from News Corp."
>
> would have been much realer.
>
> Joel
>
> ------------------------------**------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ.
Pr., 1998, but nothing much since then.

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