Staff = employee

[Jonathan Lighter]

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:
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> Poster:       Ann Burlingham <ann at BURLINGHAMBOOKS.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Staff = employee
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>
> On Wed, Nov 9, 2011 at 11:45 AM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:
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>> Poster:       Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
>> Subject:      Re: Staff = employee
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>> "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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