Reversed "avowal"

[Joel S. Berson]

At 8/17/2011 07:13 PM, George Thompson wrote:
>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."
>...
>Those of you who see the Times only on-line (and aren't simple-minded)
>weren't misled.

I was misled, but in a different way (see my original post).  I do
read the Times on paper, but "fortunately" the headline only seeped
through to my consciousness on the continuation page, where it's all
on one line.

Joel


>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

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