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

[Laurence Horn]

On Feb 16, 2012, at 5:25 PM, Ronald Butters wrote:

> 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

Whew!  For a moment there I thought they were coming to Laurence Horn...

> ; except that if I die of the sting of a bee, the collection goes instead to the Duke University Department of English").
>
> 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.
>>
>> 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.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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