Non-abusive tot moms

[Wilson Gray]

On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 9:48 AM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Like _baby daddy_.

Not IMO. It would take some serious argument to persuade a BE-speaker
that he's *not* saying _baby's_ or any other zeroed-out _-'s_ GEN.
Indeed, he'd probably get pissed off. [Wink, wink, nudge, nudge,
Charlie!:-)] A headline-writer came up with _tot mom_ in a
split-second of conscious cogitation, fully aware that _tot_ in this
case is not _tot's_, any more than _tiger_ in "tiger mom" is
_tiger's_.

Of course, it would be difficult to provide a knock-down argument that
"tot mom" is not _tot's mom_. Proving a negative and all that sort of
rot.

But, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.;-)

--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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