Snowpeople

[Neal Whitman]

I was forced to deal with the extra-compositional meaning of "snowman" when I saw an episode of Blue's Clues years ago. At one point, Steve pointed to a clay sculpture consisting of two or three balls stacked with the largest on the bottom, the smallest on top, and a rudimentary face, and called it not a "clay man", but a snowman. Why am I ok with stone lions and paper tigers, but not clay snowmen? The stacked attributive nouns of material are too much for me.

Neal

On Jan 18, 2012, at 4:24 PM, Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at IX.NETCOM.COM> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at IX.NETCOM.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Snowpeople
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Googling on
>
> ("snow people" OR "snowperson")
>
> with the dates set between 1800 and 1900 yields no hits on Google in general, but 339 hits in GB.
>
> BB
>
> On Jan 18, 2012, at 12:44 PM, Victor Steinbok wrote:
>
>> That's actually not true, unless Google changed it with their latest
>> "update". The problem is that for frequently used words or those that
>> are topheavy on recent hits will have GB hits buried deep in the pile.
>> On the other hand, many words that went out of circulation or are
>> associated with particular works often bring up one or several GB hits
>> on the first page of matches. News are handled a bit differently, as
>> clusters of news links usually show up on the first page, often among
>> the top three--or not at all. Other Google products are not so lucky.
>> Non-Google blogs show up in regular search items, but Google blogs have
>> their own category. Images rarely, if ever, show up near the top--or at
>> all, but Google and YouTube videos do appear, although the list is
>> usually not as extensive as when you do a direct video search. I have
>> not played with Google Scholar and other items enough to determine these
>> outcomes--or did play with them, but many iterations of Google ago. Also
>> note Google's peculiar form of SOPA protest--not in the same league as
>> Reddit and Wiki, but noticeable if you do a search from the Google home
>> page. (When you look at the results page, it's too small to be noticeable.)
>>
>>    VS-)
>>
>> On 1/18/2012 3:24 PM, Benjamin Barrett wrote:
>>> I have a tendency to forget that Googling in general does not include Google Books.
>
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