"Shaven"

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Mon Jun 25 18:10:20 UTC 2012


On Jun 25, 2012, at 1:34 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:

> At 6/25/2012 10:52 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>> Maybe so, but there are more than a few hits for "clean shavin'"
>> (with or without apostrophe), suggesting a reanalysis from a perhaps
>> moribund perfect participle.
>
> But are these "the clean shavin' Gilette Atra", or similar?
>
> Joel

No, they seem to describe the patient rather than the agent or instrument.  We have clean shavin men, a clean shavin look, clean shavin Dad, and so on.  And while there are 19,000+ hits for "clean shaving razor", there's only 1 hit for "clean shavin razor".

LH

>
>> Google in fact, while offering "about 52,600 results" for "clean
>> shavin", wonders forlornly whether I perhaps meant "clean
>> shaven".  The latter gets over 4 million raw ghits, some for a 1990s
>> movie "Clean, Shaven".
>>
>> LH
>>
>> On Jun 25, 2012, at 8:39 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>>
>> > "Clean-shaved," OTOH, sounds crazy..
>> >
>> > JL
>> >
>> > On Mon, Jun 25, 2012 at 8:35 AM, W Brewer <brewerwa at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> >> -----------------------
>> >> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> >> Poster:       W Brewer <brewerwa at GMAIL.COM>
>> >> Subject:      Re: "Shaven"
>> >>
>> >>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> >>
>> >> shaven : shaved. Every once in a while I?ll get all shaven & shorn for
>> >> something important, like the preacher who married the maiden all forlorn,
>> >> who milked the cow with the crumpled horn, that kicked the dog,
>> that chased
>> >> the cat, that killed the rat, that ate the malt, that lay in the house of
>> >> pancakes.
>> >>
>> >> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> >> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>> >>
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > "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
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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