Heard on TV

[Ben Zimmer]

On Sun, 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_.

Here's another puzzling usage of "(the) Jewish", seemingly as a
collective noun, from a notorious speech by Charles Lindbergh, "Who
Are the War Agitators?" (Sep. 11, 1941):

---
http://www.charleslindbergh.com/americanfirst/speech.asp
The three most important groups who have been pressing this country
toward war are the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt
administration.
...
The second major group I mentioned is the Jewish.
...
If any one of these groups--the British, the Jewish, or the
administration--stops agitating for war, I believe there will be
little danger of our involvement.
---

In all three cases, "the Jewish" could be elliptical for "the Jewish
group", but the coordinate structure of the first and third sentences
discourages this reading -- since "the British" is easily construed as
a collective noun and "the (Roosevelt) administration" seems to be a
free-standing NP, not attributively modifying "group".

Lindbergh doesn't supply an unequivocal use of "the Jewish" as a
collective noun elsewhere in the speech, so I'm not sure if I'm
off-base here.

 --bgz

--
Ben Zimmer
http://benzimmer.com/

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