Reversed "avowal"

[Laurence Horn]

On Aug 17, 2011, at 9:12 PM, Dan Goncharoff wrote:

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

I'd say so.  He avowed (asserted, claimed, declared) that he was not a crook.  So it was an avowal, a claim, and a declaration.  On the other hand, I'm not sure I'd call it an assertion, partly because "denial" is such a handy way of characterizing assertions with negative content. YMMV.

LH

>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Aug 17, 2011, at 7:52 PM, "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at att.net> wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
>> Subject:      Re: Reversed "avowal"
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> 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
>
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