A Facebook friend noting a pet peeve

[Jonathan Lighter]

Naturally it's worse than you think.

Your pal is saying that there are so many people who think that a "near
miss" *is* a hit that he feels compelled to rail against it.

Think about it.

The horror, I mean.

PS: I analyze "badunkadunk butt" to mean a "butt butt." You know, as
distinguished from a "gun butt." "pork butt," "archery butt," etc.  Wise
writers are careful to specify by doubling just which sense of a
potentially ambiguous noun they mean to convey.

JL




On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 3:37 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      A Facebook friend noting a pet peeve
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> "A 'near-miss' is NOT a shortened form of 'nearly missed' and, therefore,
> it is not something that really means a 'hit'!"
>
> Would you believe that a guy referring to himself as a "layman" defends the
> re-analysis by bitching that "widely-known vernacular should be more easily
> interpreted"?!
>
> How does he account for the fact that the "vernacular" has become
> "widely-known," if it's not "easily interpreted"?
>
> This is almost as disheartening as some of your examples, Jon.
>
> And there the guy in the pswaydo-anti-fattening-food TV ad who asks for a
> "badunkadunk butt," apparently unaware that a badunkadunk *Is* a butt. Ne
> might as well ask foe a "butt badunkadunk."
> --
> -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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> 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."

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