"triage" (v.)

[Jonathan Lighter]

Guy in Ford commercial takes car in for repairs. Tells ad star Mike Rowe
that "Fiona...immediately triaged the situation and found out what was
wrong with the brakes."

Triaged????

JL


On Sun, Nov 6, 2011 at 11:30 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      "triage" (v.)
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I was trying to determine if an occurrence of "triage" as a verb in _Rules
> of Civility_ (set in 1938) was anachronistic (like "you broke it, you
> bought it" and unlike "dibs!", mentioned previously), and I was surprised
> to see that all the OED entry has for the verb is the annotation "Rare" and
> a single cite from Herr's _Dispatches_ (1977), "He was so bad that the
> doctor triaged him, passed him over to treat the ones that‥could still be
> saved."  I'd be surprised if the early cites weren't in fact from military
> contexts like Herr's, but I'd also be surprised if these were in fact
> "rare", especially if participial uses like "triaged patients" (not
> exemplified in the OED, but rampant on the web) are included.
>
> LH
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



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

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