"complicit"

Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM
Thu Jun 21 12:55:14 UTC 2012


This popular lit-crit usage seems not to be covered in OED:

2008 David Denby, in _New Yorker_ (March 31) 16:  It’s been said by many
that antiwar films are secretly complicit in war because they can’t help
showing it off in all its messy glory.

The OED's def. doesn't do it for me: "Involved knowingly or with passive
compliance, often in something underhand, sinister, or illegal."

The dramatic "secretly" is a bit odd too: something like "inadvertently" or
"unwillingly" would be more like it.

JL
-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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



More information about the Ads-l mailing list