"shocking"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Remember when James Bond said it?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnAv3Y2EBfI

About 1 min. in.

JL

On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 7:37 PM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "shocking"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Lest we get carried away too far, consider this 1993 appearance @8:25
> http://goo.gl/bLFGv (@1:29:57 if screened from the beginning).
>
>     VS-)
>
> On 7/13/2011 8:00 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> > This goes back to a post of mine on Feb. 11. 2010, which averred that
> > "shocking," once a pretty intense word, now often means no more than
> > "startling" or "surprising."
> >
> > That may be putting it mildly. An ad that just appeared on the Yahoo home
> > page indicates that, to some people, "shocking" can mean "surprising (in
> a
> > pleasant way)."
> >
> > Now that I refer back to the ad in order to cite it, it's gone. However,
> it
> > did claim that dermatologists have found a "shocking" new treatment for
> > aging skin. That means it's some kind of miracle and you should buy it.
> >
> > Or perhaps "shocking" really means "miraculous" here.  In my day, similar
> > ads sometimes contented themselves with "surprising" but wouldn't shy
> from
> > "miraculous."  "Miraculous," however, unlike "shocking," has decidedly
> > positive connotations.
> >
> > The shift from negative to positive makes me nervous. (And don't say
> "bad" =
> > "good" is a common example: we're talking formal discourse here, and that
> > kind of "bad " doesn't even mean "good" in the relevant sense of "good.")
> >
> >
> > Even so, I now frequently hear TV journalists use "shocking" in a neutral
> > sense.  There are many more traditional exx. too, but that makes no
> > difference.
> >
> > JL
>
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