whollop; prevent

Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM
Mon Nov 12 13:31:54 UTC 2012


A crawl seen several times on CNN yesterday noted that New Jersey and New
York had been "whollopped by Sandy."

Today a crawl asks, "Preventing the fiscal cliff?"

You "prevent" trouble; you "avoid" a cliff.

And but(t) me no but(t)s.  If it's a cliff in the sentence, it's still a
cliff.

BTW, a Tea Party honcho told Soledad O'Brien on Friday that they would
never "meet the Democrats half way on taxes" because - wait for it - "If
you go halfway over a cliff, you're still over the cliff."  So no
compromise permissible.

JL

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

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



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