"Bees' nest"?!!! WTF!!!

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Thu Feb 16 00:05:26 UTC 2012


I first heard tell of the so-called "bees' nest" on an episode of the
cartoon, Family Guy. Bad enough. But, last night, no less a
commentator than Stephen Colbert appeared on television with a mock-up
of a hornets' nest, which he referred to as

"a bees' nest filled with yellowjackets."

As has been argued elsewhere, this kind of thing is of no account
because the semantic interpretation is perfectly clear. Besides,
language-change is inevitable and inexorable, in any case. Why care,
unless you're some kind of prescriptivist nut?

An excellent point.

--
-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

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



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