Unwatering

[Neal Whitman]

Just heard on Today show: unwatering. The title was "The ~ of New York"; Savannah Guthrie asked a guy about it, who attributed it to the Army Corps of Engineers in the days after Katrina, with a base form: "to unwater New Orleans". Why not "dewater" or even "drain"? Don't know. Don't seem to recall it from Ben's "un" column. Haven't had time to seek earlier attestations...

Neal

On Nov 1, 2012, at 4:20 AM, Paul Frank <paulfrank at POST.HARVARD.EDU> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Paul Frank <paulfrank at POST.HARVARD.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Nagging Question--was: Hot new Einstein quote
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Wed, Oct 31, 2012 at 8:30 PM, Hunter, Lynne R CIV
> SPAWARSYSCEN-PACIFIC, 71700 <lynne.hunter at navy.mil> wrote:
>> I've tried to keep quiet about this, but it just keeps nagging me: How
>> do we know that Albert Einstein was "even smarter than Mark Twain"? Do
>> we just accept that as a given? Is it because Einstein was a genius in
>> math and science and Mark Twain was _only_ a genius in literature? Would
>> we automatically say that Sir Isaac Newton was smarter than Shakespeare,
>> or that any person highly accomplished in the sciences is _smarter_ than
>> a person accomplished in other disciplines? Does math and science trump
>> other fields even among this company (as it does among the general
>> population, evidently contributing to the reverence for technology and
>> its consequences)? Does anybody else feel uneasy about making these
>> comparisons?
>>
>> Lynne Hunter
>
> Yesterday's Times answered your question with a W.H. Auden quote:
> "When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby
> curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes."
>
> Cheers,
> Paul
>
> Paul Frank
> Translator
> German, French, Chinese => English
> Neuchâtel, Switzerland
> paulfrank at post.harvard.edu
>
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