vintage, adj.
Jonathan Lighter
wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM
Sat Oct 1 00:22:46 UTC 2011
OED has this from 1939 ("vintage [Noel] Coward"). The def. is, basically,
"classic."
I wonder whether the more recent ironic sense deserves mention. True, almost
any word may be used ironically, but I encounter this constantly. Last week
CNN described the Iranian president's UN address as "vintage Ahmadinejad."
The def. might be, "all-too-typical and familiar."
Something similar would then be required at "classic," which is also
commonly used thus.
JL
--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
More information about the Ads-l
mailing list