Engineering amazing

[Jonathan Lighter]

The commercial I mentioned is for Grant Thornton, management consultants.

As the words materialize on the screen, a voice tells you,

"Big doesn't win....

"Original wins.

"Fresh wins.

"Smart wins."

(The ellipsis is taken up with a couple of ordinary nouns that don't win.)

JL

On Sun, Sep 18, 2011 at 11:04 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Engineering amazing
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Sep 18, 2011, at 10:23 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>
> > The gerund notion is about verbs being used as nouns. This appears to =
> be an
> > adjective used as a noun.
> >=20
> > If I had to make a semantic distinction - which Lexus probably didn't =
> - I' d
> > say that
> > to engineer "amazing" (adj. > n.) means to engineer that which is =
> amazing,
> > while to engineer "amazing" (v. > n.) means to engineer the word =
> "amazing."
> > That is, if it means anything I can comprehend at all.
>
> Whatever it is (I seem to recall being taught once that a gerund*ive* is =
> an adjective used as a noun, but that may not be what was said, and if =
> it was it might not be right), this is my favorite recent example of =
> engineering amazing.  View and manipulate at your own risk.
>
> http://inoyan.narod.ru/kaleidoskop.swf
>
> LH=
>
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