Reversed "avowal"

[Joel S. Berson]

At 8/17/2011 09:12 PM, Dan Goncharoff wrote:
>I am finding this thread very confusing. When Nixon said, "I am not a
>crook", was that an avowal?

Yes.  But I would be very confused if I saw a headline that said
"Nixon avows crooking", or "Letter counters crooking avowal from
Nixon".  (And not because it said "crooking".)

Joel


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