"war with words" aka "paper war"?

[Laurence Horn]

On Feb 3, 2014, at 9:38 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

> What makes it noteworthy is that the established idiom has apparently
> become opaque to some people who are educated enough to write news copy for
> a giant corporation.
>
> What's more, had the writer been familiar with "war of words," he'd
> certainly have used it to avoid having two "withs" in the space of three
> words.
>
> JL

Indeed, and my first thought was that the writer was simply assimilating the intended "of" to the later "with", but that wouldn't explain the other hits that have been noted for "war with words".

LH
>
>
> On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 9:24 AM, Amy West <medievalist at w-sts.com> wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Amy West <medievalist at W-STS.COM>
>> Subject:      Re: "war with words" aka "paper war"?
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> On 2/2/14 12:00 AM, Automatic digest processor wrote:
>>> Date:    Sat, 1 Feb 2014 12:45:49 -0500
>>> From:    "Joel S. Berson"<Berson at ATT.NET>
>>> Subject: Re: "war with words" aka "paper war"?
>>>
>>> At 2/1/2014 09:06 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>>>>> Yahoo! news headline:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Magic Johnson calls off his needless, one-sided war with words with
>> Lakers
>>>>> coach Mike D'Antoni.
>>>>>
>>>>> It's a kind of "war" that uses words as "weapons." The absurd "war of
>>>>> words," said by old people, means that the words "belong to" the war.
>> Which
>>>>> is just so bogus and illogical.
>>> Even older people might say "paper war".  OED3 has a quotation from
>>> 1710, and the New-England Courant has one from 1721 Nov. 6, 3/2:
>>>
>>> "By the two following Paragraphs taken from different Prints from
>>> London, we find that the Experiment of inoculating the Small Pox is
>>> like to give the same Occasion of a Paper-War there, as it has lately
>>> given among our selves."
>>>
>>> Joel
>> "War with words" seems to parallel "duel with swords" or "duel with
>> pistols". There is an instrumentality sense of "with", and the object of
>> the war follows the second with.
>>
>> Certainly, the more idiomatic construction is "war of words," but this
>> doesn't become so opaque to the readers as to be non-sensical.
>>
>> ---Amy West
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
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