de-infest and other goodies

[Victor Steinbok]

One more addition from today's blog posts. A number of them noted
Darrell Issa's claim that Barack Obama is "one of the most corrupt
presidents in modern times." He quickly backpedaled, claiming instead
that he meant the Obama administration (despite using the word
"president" quite unambiguously). Now he's pulled a double-switch and
claimed that he was using a different dictionary definition of "corrupt"

http://bit.ly/hKdW7v
>
>     "I think people misunderstand the meaning of the word corrupt, and
>     obviously, CNN does. 'Corrupt', or 'corrupted' or 'failure', it's
>     no different than a disc drive that's given you some bits that are
>     wrong," Issa said on CNN.
>     Issa continued, "I have never said it's illegal. I've never made
>     any of the statements that are often said on CNN that implied
>     wrong-doing of the president at a criminal level...."
>

It's quite obvious that the original statement involved OED corrupt II. 5.

> 5. Perverted from uprightness and fidelity in the discharge of duty;
> influenced by bribery or the like; venal.

The alternate look implied the definition found in the 2004 Draft:

> Electronics and Computing. Of software or data: containing flaws or
> damaged in some way, esp. so as to be unusable or inaccessible by
> normal procedures. Also: (of a disk, card, etc.) containing software
> or data damaged in this way.

But Issa missed an opportunity to go to number 4:

> 4. Debased in character; infected with evil; depraved; perverted;
> evil, wicked.

We all know that this is what he really meant...

     VS-)

PS: Double-switch--in the baseball sense or any other--is not in OED.
Here's Wiki:

http://goo.gl/Otq37
> In baseball, the double switch is a type of player substitution. The
> double switch is typically used to make a pitching substitution, while
> simultaneously placing the incoming pitcher in a more favorable spot
> in the batting order than was occupied by the outgoing pitcher.

Wiktionary has both a baseball and a more general definition:

> When two players are replaced simultaneously, typically so that a
> fielder can hit in the pitcher's spot in the batting order.

The other definition is completely straight forward.



On 1/4/2011 6:16 PM, Victor Steinbok wrote:
> Some minor observations from recent--and not so recent--blog posts. I
> meant to do this a couple of weeks ago, when Sasha Volokh (a legal
> blogger) triumphantly declared that OED has incorporated his
> corrections and additions. Since that particular bit had been posted
> before I finished my collection, I kicked the bucket down the street a
> bit. Since then, I've added a few more.
> ...

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