"benefactor"?

[George Thompson]

(If prescriptivism gives you the willies, delete this now.)

>From an article in the NYTimes sports pages, Bloomsday:

“You take a player like him with the tools he has, he’s a lot like a
pitcher with a plus fastball, good stuff, and you’re just waiting for him
to develop it,” General Manager Doug Melvin said. “You’ve got to be a
little more patient with those kinds of guys. Do you get rid of them or
hang on to them so you can be the benefactor? In most cases, other teams
become the benefactor, because there’s a point where you have to give up on
them. But we saw something last year.”

Is the distinction between "benefactor" and "beneficiary" going to join
"ancestor" and "descendant" in the limbo of tedious pedantry?  No doubt.

GAT

-- 
George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much since then.

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