"forgettable"

[victor steinbok]

I'm not convinced. I see is more like "we wish it could have been
forgotten". (The reply is both to RB and LH)

Consider this chain. "Unforgettable" means two different thing--someone one
cannot forget and something that is particularly noteworthy. The second one
has nothing to do with forgetting--it's more of an intrinsic property of the
moment.

The antonym to the first one is "forgettable". The second one--not so much.
But it is precisely this combination that spawns this particular instance of
"forgettable"==notorious. So it's actually an UNforgettable moment, but for
the reason that is OPPOSITE of the ordinary UNforgettable moment. Hence it's
the forgettable moment! It's like a cancellation of two un- prefixes.

VS-)

On Sun, Jul 24, 2011 at 9:03 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

>
> On Jul 24, 2011, at 6:59 PM, Ben Zimmer wrote:
>
> > http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=ap-halloffameinductions
> > "The switch-hitting Alomar won a record 10 Gold Gloves at second base,
> > was a 12-time All-Star and a career .300 hitter. Full of baseball
> > smarts and grace, he’s also linked with one of the game’s most
> > forgettable moments -- he spit on umpire John Hirschbeck during an
> > argument in 1996."
> >
> > So forgettable that it's still being talked about 15 years later?
> >
> > —bgz
> >
> Hmmm.  "forgettable" = 'worthy of being forgotten'?  The negative
> counterpart of "memorable"?
>
> LH

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