another head-scratcher

[Ben Zimmer]

On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 5:17 PM, Dan Goncharoff wrote:
>
> On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 5:06 PM, Victor Steinbok wrote:
>
> > http://goo.gl/BnQYZ
> >
> > > Bopp parsed two court rulings, one of them on a case he brought. By
> > > his reading, and contrary to past law, it's OK for a federal candidate
> > > to call up a CEO and make the ask. "I can read the law," he says, "and
> > > I felt confident that what we were doing was well within the
> > > strictures of the law."
> >
> > "Make the ask"? New one for me. It keeps going.
[...]
> I know "ask" and "make the ask" from non-profit fundraising. The reason for
> the word to exist is to overcome the reluctance of polite people to talk
> about money. The "ask" is the conversation about money -- about a specific
> amount of money.
>
> Asking someone to donate money is a request.
>
> Asking someone to donate $100 is an "ask".
>
> I believe the phrase is also used in other contexts, like salary
> negotiations.

Arnold Zwicky had a long Language Log post about nominalized "ask":

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=340

--bgz

--
Ben Zimmer
http://benzimmer.com/

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