"temporal"?

[victor steinbok]

I was just about to write that it wasn't just a "malaprop" (and not
necessarily "mal-" anything) for "comtemporary", but for both "contemporary"
/and/ "temporary"--fixed in time in the past. I keep trying to come up with
something better, but, the best I can do other than "temporal", is
"time-framed" or "temporally restricted", which are no better. On the other
hand, I don't think I have a problem with this sense of temporal.

NB: Those OED entries that run out of examples in the 1830s or earlier
indeed often have passed out of use. But those that are listed through 1870s
through 1910s are often simply in a desperate need of an update. This one
falls in the latter category.

VS-)

On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 6:37 PM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:

>
> On Sep 13, 2011, at 10:50 AM, James Smith wrote:
>
> >
> > In the context used in your example, it seems natural to me; I would read
> it as fixed or limited by time, able to neither overcome nor adapt to time
> or change, temporary, fleeting, transient.
> >
> >
> > --- On Tue, 9/13/11, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU> wrote:
> >
> >> Alessandra Stanley on the tv series
> >> "Entourage", in the Arts section of the NYT on September
> >> 12:
> >>
> >> Some fans complained that "Entourage" grew stale, but
> >> actually it's remarkable how fresh the series managed to
> >> stay given how temporal its setting.
> >>
> >> (this is from the hard copy; it's the same on-line, i now
> >> see.)
> >>
> >> is this a malaprop (of some kind) for "contemporary"?
> >> or is there a current sense of "temporal" here i'm not aware
> >> of?
>
> ah, now i see that the intended sense is 'temporary'.  a huge number of
> hits clearly in this sense.  a very small sampling:
> ...

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