pronouns gone mad

[Jonathan Lighter]

You'd need a special Schroedinger box to allow it the cat knead your
thighs, etc., while still boxed up and indeterminate.

Are these popular now?

JL



On Wed, May 7, 2014 at 4:41 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: pronouns gone mad
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On May 7, 2014, at 3:44 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>
> >
> > On May 7, 2014, at 3:21 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
> >
> >> Makes me wonder just whose claws the cat was using to "knead[] your
> >> thighs".  And whether the cat was in a (perhaps intermediate)
> >> transsexual state.
> >>
> >> Joel
> >
> > Or alternatively whether it might have been a Schrödinger's kitten, both
> male and female under
> > the box is opened and its sex is determined.
> >
> > LH
>
>
> I meant, of course, "until", not "under".  Those cat boxes can be tricky
> locales, especially when your cat has poor aim.
>
> >
> >>
> >> At 5/7/2014 01:06 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
> >>> You've clearly never had a cat with multiple personality disorder.
>  Ableist!
> >>>
> >>> LH
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On May 7, 2014, at 11:01 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> God forbid your gendered pronouns make you into an unwitting sexist.
> >>>>
> >>>> Arden Moore of Yahoo! today:
> >>>>
> >>>> "If you need a sign it is time to trim your cat's nails, nothing is
> clearer
> >>>> than when he perches on your lap, purrs and starts kneading your
> thighs
> >>>> with her front paws. But this is also a sign of affection. Experts
> say that
> >>>> this action beckons your adult cat back to a safe, welcoming memory
> when
> >>>> she was nuzzling his mother for milk as a newborn kitten. He is being
> >>>> affectionate and a bit nostalgic. "
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Back in the eighties I had one or two freshman who did this - out of
> >>>> thousands - before being corrected.
> >>>>
> >>>> Now it's a  bylined Web correspondent.
> >>>>
> >>>> 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
> >>>
> >>> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >>
> >> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> 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