year as adjective

[Jonathan Lighter]

Accountants probably also had something to do with it: "The 1959 profits
compared with...."

Etc.

But it's still "new" in general usage.

JL


On Sun, Apr 28, 2013 at 10:18 AM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>wrote:

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> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      year as adjective
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>
> Arnold's unremarkable syntax from the "Chicano" thread:
>
> "the first OED2 cite, from 1947 Arizona, is somewhat disparaging in tone."
>
> In case some young folks don't realize it, this journalistic use of a
> year-date as an adjective is pretty "new" - if you know what I mean.
>
> Having read more than seven zillion words of English beginning with, let's
> say, Shakespeare, I assure everyone that the construction "year-date
> according to the Gregorian calendar + NP" did not exist before the 20th C.,
> and if you want my two cents about it, probably didn't appear until (I'll
> go out on a limb) the late '60s. Or even a little later.
>
> We dinos would have said "from Arizona in 1947" or "from Arizona, 1947."
> Conceivably it developed from the journalist's obsession to save space via
> the saturation of the brainosphere with phrases like "The new 1957
> Thunderbird!" and "The unstoppable 1961 New York Yankees!"
>
> In pre-1970 pop ontology the Gregorian year was not recognized as an
> attribute of anything else. Now it is. A new era in thought.
>
> JL
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
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