Staff = employee

[Jonathan Lighter]

In fact, no longer weird at all.

JL

On Wed, Nov 9, 2011 at 1:03 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I can remember an African-American freshman writing in a theme, about
> 1979-80, something or other  "because I am a minority," rather than
> "...belong to a minority" or something like that.
>
> It seemed weird at the time. In more recent years, not very.
>
> JL
>
> On Wed, Nov 9, 2011 at 12:57 PM, Ann Burlingham <ann at burlinghambooks.com> wrote:
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Ann Burlingham <ann at BURLINGHAMBOOKS.COM>
>> Subject:      Re: Staff = employee
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> On Wed, Nov 9, 2011 at 11:45 AM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:
>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>> Poster:       Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
>>> Subject:      Re: Staff = employee
>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>> "minority" looks very different; indeed, it looks like the creation of a new noun by truncation, in this case from something like "minority people", developing to "minorities" 'members of a minority group', and then to a singular "minority" 'member of a minority group'.  from OED3 (March 2002):
>>
>>
>> I was thinking that I could get to "73 staff" from "73 staff members".
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>



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