ask, n.

[Laurence Horn]

The opening sentence of a (quite favorable) NYT book review by Lydia Millet on Sam Lipsyte's 2010 book "The Ask", at
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/books/review/Millet-t.html--

Sam Lipsyte’s third novel, “The Ask,” is a dark and jaded beast — the sort of book that, if it were an animal, would be a lumbering, hairy, crypto­zoological ape-man with a near-crippling case of elephantiasis.

But no, I haven't read the book.

LH


On Sep 24, 2014, at 2:01 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

> I may have mentioned this increasingly common TV-news type item before.
> 
> The headline on the Yahoo! home page is "Obama's ask of Middle East."
> 
> The word isn't repeated in the accompanying story, which uses the verb
> "implore."
> 
> So the headline could have said "Obama's plea to Middle East," but "ask" is
> shorter and maybe less wimplisitic.
> 
> 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

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org