late = 'died long ago' (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Tyler Schnoebelen]

Google Ngrams might be one way to look at how "The Late" has been used. (For
example, "The Late Mr" is a reasonable search term for exploring:
http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=the+late+mr&year_start=1600&yea
r_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=).

Having suggested this as a data source for examining how "late" has changed
over time, I will stop far short and just note a couple favorite items:

- Back in the late 1700s, it seems like a common use of "The late Mr." to
talk about marriages (if the bride's father was dead, for example) or estate
sales.

- Fielding published "The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild
the Great" in 1743-Jonathan Wild had died in 1725. Wikipedia suggests that
Fielding was working on this before 1741, though.

- "The Theological and Philological Works of the Late Mr. John Toland. Being
a System of Jewish, Gentile and Mahometan Christianity" was originally
published in 1732. Toland died in 1722.
http://books.google.com/books?id=d1Fl7tDqIUwC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&
q&f=false

Tyler

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Poster:       "Mullins, Bill AMRDEC" <Bill.Mullins at US.ARMY.MIL>
Subject:      Re: late = 'died long ago' (UNCLASSIFIED)
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---

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

I ran across it in a "How to Speak Southern" type of book, in the context of
a bad joke, along the lines of:

Northerners call it "The Civil War"
Southerners call it "The War Between the States"
True Southerners call it "The War of Northern Aggression"
Pockets of South Carolina call it "The Late Unpleasantness"


This was in the late 1980s, well after the surge of such books in the Jimmy
Carter years.

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---------------------------------------------------------------------
> > > Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> > > Subject:      late = 'died long ago'
> > >
> >
---------------------------------------------------------------------
> -
> > -
> > > --------
> > >
> > > CNN mentions that Mr. Obama quoted "the late President" in his
> first
> > > Inaugural address.
> > >
> > > Which President was it?
> > >
> > > Abraham Lincoln.
> > >
> > > JL
> > >
> > > --
> > > "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
> >
> > Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
> > Caveats: NONE
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > 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

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

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

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