Amazing = delicious

Neal Whitman nwhitman at AMERITECH.NET
Tue Apr 16 20:12:35 UTC 2013


Three times in the past three weeks, I've heard my teenage sons or their peers use "amazing" to mean "very good-tasting". I'm not surprised to hear this word narrowed to mean "amazing in a gustatory manner" in a nonce usage, the same as if someone had described a piece of music or a movie that way. But three taste-related usages in a month, from kids who aren't just going around calling everything they like amazing, makes me wonder if a new(?) shade of meaning becoming lexicalized.

Neal

On Apr 16, 2013, at 3:58 PM, Neal Whitman <nwhitman at AMERITECH.NET> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Neal Whitman <nwhitman at AMERITECH.NET>
> Subject:      How was your guys's days?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> My wife, just now, to our sons, just home from school. Complete w singular agreement.
>
> Neal
>
> On Apr 16, 2013, at 2:45 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>
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>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject:      Re: Heard: "I'm on _your guys's_ side." [NT]
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> On Tue, Apr 16, 2013 at 12:01 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> what's struck me about it is the case concord.
>>
>>
>> That's exactly what struck *me* about that and the purpose of my prior was
>> to say that. Yet, somehow, I failed to say anything about that, merely
>> posting the jesting afterthought, instead.
>>
>> Youneverknow.
>>
>> --
>> -Wilson
>> -----
>> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
>> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
>> -Mark Twain
>>
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