Reversed "avowal"

[Dan Goncharoff]

I am finding this thread very confusing. When Nixon said, "I am not a
crook", was that an avowal?

Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 17, 2011, at 7:52 PM, "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at att.net> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: Reversed "avowal"
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>
> 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.
>>
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>
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