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

[Dan Goncharoff]

It's very confusing, as well as life threatening, to confuse a bee and
a wasp when you are allergic to one and not the other, and you get
stung.

Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 16, 2012, at 5:27 PM, Ronald Butters <ronbutters at aol.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Ronald Butters <ronbutters at AOL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "Bees' nest"?!!! WTF!!!
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> It is not easy for me to imagine a situation in which calling a "bee" a =
> "wasp" (or vice versa) would be unclear or confusing--maybe in a legally =
> valid contract? ("I will and bequeth my bukkake film collection to =
> Lawrence Horn; except that if I die of the sting of a bee, the =
> collection goes instead to the Duke University Department of English").=20=
>
>
> And, again, while there may be exceptions in scientific taxonomy, in =
> most everybody's English, it seems to me, "bee" is the only hypernym for =
> "wasp" "hornet" "honeybee" "bumblebee" that doesn't include mosquitoes.
>
>
>
> On Feb 16, 2012, at 12:38 PM, Dan Goncharoff wrote:
>
>> If all one is concerned with is describing what some people are using,
>> that's fine.
>> =20
>> If one is also interested in evaluating whether that usage is clear or
>> confusing, the facts about bees seem highly relevant, at least to me.
>
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