apologist/apologizer

[Victor Steinbok]

I suspect, most people would have trouble differentiating between
"apology" and "apologia". Some dictionaries are having similar
difficulties. There may be a bit of recency fallacy here as well--the
earliest uses may well relate to "apology" and be synonymous with
"apologist", then it all changed in mid-19th century. The recent wave of
apology-based apologists has been quite independent of the original. I
can't say I really blame them--at least, no more so than I blame people
for learning the reversed negation idioms and never question them.

On the other hand, Bolling is still an idiot and what I said about his
usage still holds.

     VS-)

On 1/19/2012 11:55 AM, David Barnhart wrote:
> Found recently:
>
>
>
> Religious leaders, not surprisingly, are very active apologists. In recent
> years Pope John Paul II has asked forgiveness for his church's violence
> during the 16th-century Counter-Reformation, for complicity in the African
> slave trade and for abuses committed by Christian colonizers against Indian
> peoples.  "SAY YOU'RE SORRY; CLEANSE YOURSELF THIS MILLENNIUM; BRITAIN IS
> DOING IT," an editorial in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Nexis), June 8,
> 1997, p E-2
>
>
>
> It's a start, but it's not enough. The apologies tendered by Bill Clinton
> for the Tuskegee experiments and Tony Blair for the Irish famine only point
> up the need for volunteer apologists to aid in this great work. Florence
> King, "APOLOGIZER BUNNY SHIFTS INTO OVERDRIVE," a commentary in the Richmond
> Times Dispatch (Nexis), August 17, 1997, p F-5
>
>
>
> [AN unimpeachable source informs us that the latest rage in Washington is to
> take a course in apology-training.
>
> ''Politics,'' he explained, ''is having to say you're sorry.''
>
> ''Whatever became of assertiveness-training?'' we asked him. .
>
> ''Postive? You want positive?'' our source said. ''How about the ploy of
> 'the one teeny little mistake'? You know, where the apologist says in
> effect, 'With all the things I'm doing right, maybe I'm entitled....'''
>
> ''Or perhaps you can say, 'I take full responsibility' - without saying for
> what,'' we proposed.
>
> Melvin Moddocks, "The new wisdom: always apologize, always explain,"
> Christian Science Monitor (Nexis), March 13, 1987, p 23]
>
>
>
> I also saw two definitions in _Wikidictionary_.  So, I guess it's here to
> stay, at least for a while.
>
>
>
> David

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