"a day that will live in infamy" (in a positive way)

Joel S. Berson Berson at ATT.NET
Fri Oct 5 15:23:32 UTC 2012


Larry, I merely wanted to keep stamping out reiterations of the
error, even if only in Subject headings of email messages.  (I did
remember that we had discussed it before -- and moi; IIRC, I was the
one who called attention to the "date which".)  Your message (at
least as excerpted below) didn't actually quote Ojeda, and I didn't
search the archives for the Subject line of the earlier thread.

Joel

At 10/4/2012 11:03 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>On Oct 4, 2012, at 10:02 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>
> > Just two corrections (to the Subject line, which perhaps is not
> > Mark's invention) -- Roosevelt said (and apparently drafted, from the
> > facsimile) "date which", not "day that".
>
>It was my subject line, and I was quoting Bobby Ojeda (see below),
>not FDR.  The point that the original version had "which" (and
>"date"), rather than "that" (and "day"), came up in the earlier
>thread, but  Bobby O. is hardly alone in misremembering it.
>
>LH
> >
> > As far as I'm concerned, his "which" is correct.  ("December 7, 1941,
> > a date" is unique, and so does not need a restrictive "that"
> > clause.)  They knew how to teach English at Groton, and if the
> > students didn't learn they would be corrected at Harvard.  But then,
> > I'm a prescriptivist.
> >
> > Joel
> >
> >
> > At 10/4/2012 09:13 PM, Mark Mandel wrote:
> >
> >> Coming *very* late to the party, with a book on my table whose
> frontispiece
> >> is Roosevelt's hand-edited typescript of that address. (*White House
> >> Ghosts: Presidents and their Speechwriters*. *From FDR to George W.
> >> Bush. *Robert
> >> Schlesinger. 2008.)
> >>
> >> Pp. 26-27. Roosevelt dictates to his secretary, Grace Tully:
> >>
> >> > "Yesterday -- comma -- December 7 -- comma -- 1941 -- comma -- a date
> >> > which will live in world history -- comma -- the United States
> of America
> >> > was simultaneously and deliberately attacked by naval and air
> forces of the
> >> > Empire of Japan -- period." Later, going over the draft,
> Roosevelt made a
> >> > handful of changes, scratching out "world history," for example, for
> >> > "infamy."
> >> >
> >>
> >> "Simultaneously" to "suddenly" is also in the hand corrections in the
> >> frontispiece.
> >>
> >> Mark Mandel
> >>
> >> On Fri, Jun 1, 2012 at 10:20 PM, Laurence Horn
> <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:
> >>
> >> > According to Bobby Ojeda, announcer and himself former New York Mets
> >> > pitcher, on the Mets' post-game show tonight, that's the legacy of
> >> > tonight's game, after Johan Santana completed the first no-hitter in the
> >> > 50-year history of the Mets.  Nothing infamous (in the
> traditional sense)
> >> > about the game or the day; it's just a bleaching, like that of
> "notorious"
> >> > = 'famous', facilitated of course by the FDR tag line for
> Pearl Harbor, but
> >> > unlike Bobby O., Roosevelt really *meant* it back in Dec. '41.
> >> >
> >> > LH
> >> >
> >> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> >> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >> >
> >>
> >> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >> 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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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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