"war with words" aka "paper war"?

[Jonathan Lighter]

Not be confused with a "*war with nerves."

JL


On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 10:59 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "war with words" aka "paper war"?
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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:
> >
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> >> -----------------------
> >> 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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