MA tornadoes

[victor steinbok]

Four tornadoes hit Massachusetts today during the day, all of them in the
Springfield area. A couple were fairly minor, but two did major damage and
caused casualties. The news are pouring nonstop over most local channels.

A couple of minor observations. One reporter described a "tornastic storm".
There are quite a few ghits for "tornadic" and OED and MWOL(11) list it
(along with Wiktionary, but not many others). But "tornastic" only get 235
raw ghits.

OED has "to take a look" as one of several "takes" VIII. 52.a. But it's not
an imperative in that location--not sure if it makes a difference. Of
course, the "Take a look!" command is quite common in news reporting, when
the report includes a video. What I've also been hearing from local
reporters here (and from others, but it's somewhat scattered) is "take a
listen" where one would normally expect "take a look". A few times I've
heard a real odd one--"take a hear", although not from reporters. In a way,
I feel uncomfortable even reporting this because it seems so ordinary (but
still odd-sounding nouning of "listen"). With 5.6 million raw ghits--but
many complaints about "grammar"--neither part should be surprising.

VS-)

PS: OK, the total number of tornadoes has been upped to 7--2 in Springfield,
2 in West Springfield, 2 in Wesfield and one in Sturbridge/Southbridge. It's
possible that some of these were the same and not all of them hit the ground
in full.

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