Heard on TV

[Laurence Horn]

On Sep 4, 2011, at 9:34 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:

> Spoken by the voiceoverer of a 2004 movie called Saved,
> 
> "Cassandra Edelstein was the only _Jewish_ to attend [our "christian"
> sleepaway camp,] American Eagles."
> 
> I don't know whether this occurs in the *real* wild. My first thought
> was that _Jewish_ was being used like _colored_ in similar
> environments, which is new, IME. But, on second thought, maybe it was
> being used as a "euphemism" for _Jew_.
> 

Second-stage euphemism, the first being "Jewish person" for "Jew", where "Christian person" wouldn't be used.  (Locus classicus:  "I'm not a Jew, I'm Jew-ISH.  I don't go the whole hog."--Jonathan Miller)  Earlier alternatives: "Hebrew/Israelite gentleman".

> Youneverknow.
> 
> Also,
> 
> "There was no act _too vulgar_ to get her expelled." That is,
> regardless of the vulgarity of her actions, the admin refused to
> expell her.

Classic hypernegation.  Other examples:

No detail was too small to overlook.   --New Yorker 12/14/81, Words of One Syllable Department                 
People knew too little about him not to vote against him.    --Bill Moyers on why voters in 1984 primaries voted for Gary Hart                 

No one is too poor not to own an automobile.   --Review by Vincent Canby (N. Y. Times 1/22/84) of "El Norte"                 

Nothing is too small or too mean to be disregarded by our scientific economy.  --R. H. Patterson, Economy of Capital (1865), cited in Hodgson (1885)'s _Errors in the Use of English_)

In each case, the meaning is the opposite from what would be computed based on the ordinary meaning of "too" as 'to an extent that …not…'   


> 
> Not "vulgar enough"? And it still feels strange in its "corrected" form.

Partly because "enough" has an evaluatively positive implication, which is out of place here, just as "too" has a negative one.  But cf. "There was no act sufficiently vulgar (as) to get her expelled."  

LH
> 
> BTW, I've lost track of the plot. I don't know whether _Cassandra
> Edelstein_ and _her_ are the same person.
> 
> --
> -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
> 
> 
> Your HTML signature here
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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