A taxonomy of arse

[Jonathan Lighter]

He clearly made little use of HDAS. (And you know how that's pronounced.)

JL

On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 10:30 AM, Damien Hall
<damien.hall at newcastle.ac.uk>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Damien Hall <damien.hall at NEWCASTLE.AC.UK>
> Subject:      A taxonomy of arse
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> http://flowingdata.com/2012/10/26/a-taxonomy-of-arse/
>
> This lovely graphic is (I think) of interest to those interested in US /
> UK=
>  differences, lexicographers, and slangologists.  It treats _arse_ and
> _ass=
> _ as equivalent (though clearly there are idioms involving that lexeme
> that=
>  are not universal in the English-speaking world), and then categorises
> the=
>  uses of the word (whether individual expressions have it as _ass_ or
> _arse=
> _) into types.  The exhaustiveness is great, but what I particularly like
> i=
> s the lines from one section of the taxonomy to another. For example,
> _smar=
> t ass/arse_ is primarily in the 'Good' section because _ass/arse_ is
> colloc=
> ated with positive _smart_, but _smart ass/arse_ is actually an insult, so
> =
> there is a line from the 'Good' section to the 'Bad' section.  Connections
> =
> like this could be helpful in understanding how lexical items change their
> =
> meaning over time (well, these particular lexical items, anyway).
>
> For fairness I should note that this graphic apparently comes originally
> fr=
> om Stephen Wildish's Tumblr blog, but I picked it up when it was passed on
> =
> on Nathan Yau's blog, _Flowing Data_.  There's a link from the image in
> _Fl=
> owing Data_ back to the source, but, as of the time of writing, Tumblr is
> h=
> aving a problem and the link can't be used.
>
> Damien
>
> --
>
> Damien Hall
> Newcastle University (UK)
>
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