"war with words" aka "paper war"?

[Amy West]

On 2/4/14 12:00 AM, Automatic digest processor wrote:
> Date:    Mon, 3 Feb 2014 09:38:36 -0500
> From:    Jonathan Lighter<wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: Re: "war with words" aka "paper war"?
>
> 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
Not necessarily. The choice of that first "with" may have been
influenced by thinking ahead to that second "with." To Google Ngrams,
Lightman?

---Amy West

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