"a day that will live in infamy" (in a positive way)

Joel S. Berson Berson at ATT.NET
Sat Jun 2 03:31:32 UTC 2012


At 6/1/2012 10:32 PM, Arnold Zwicky wrote:
>On Jun 1, 2012, at 7:20 PM, Larry Horn wrote:
> >
> > According to Bobby Ojeda, announcer and himself former New York
> Mets pitcher, on the Mets' post-game show tonight, that's the
> legacy of tonight's game, after Johan Santana completed the first
> no-hitter in the 50-year history of the Mets.  Nothing infamous (in
> the traditional sense) about the game or the day; it's just a
> bleaching, like that of "notorious" = 'famous', facilitated of
> course by the FDR tag line for Pearl Harbor, but unlike Bobby O.,
> Roosevelt really *meant* it back in Dec. '41.
>
>of course, the original is "a day which will live in infamy".  that
>was before CMOS got to it.

1)  Of course, the original is "a *date* which will live in
infamy."  (And Roosevelt was correct to use "which".  But that's
another story.)

2)  Larry heard it, I didn't.  But was Oejda thinking of the hit that
landed on the foul line (a tennis umpire would have run down from his
chair to point to the ball mark) but was called foul, thus allowing
the no-hitter to continue?  That would make it an "infamous" no-hitter.

Joel

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



More information about the Ads-l mailing list