[Ads-l] "Only?!"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Not only do I vote for irony, I proudly acknowledge that I use the word
ironically all the time.

My small contribution to semantic devolution.

JL

On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 11:53 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "Only?!"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU wrote
> > I vote for irony.
>
> Cf. the "ten o'clock scholar."
>
> On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 10:59 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: "Only?!"
> >
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > I vote for irony.
> >
> > LH
> >
> > On Jan 3, 2015, at 6:08 PM, tajewell89 wrote:
> >
> > > Headline taken from LAist:
> > >=20
> > > "It only took nine months to finish a project that was supposed to =
> > take five weeks: installing a gate."
> > >=20
> > > Isn't this use of "only" a bit backward? Or is there an ironic usage =
> > here?
> > >=20
> > > -Tim J.
> > >=20
> > > Sent from my iPhone
> > > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > > The American Dialect Society - =
> >
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v1/url?u=3Dhttp://www.americandialect.or=
> >
> g/&k=3DdpQisR3avULHgiNaNeY%2Btg%3D%3D%0A&r=3DMW6Q85EuQFDFs0kj9ASwdaXohusE8=
> >
> 33r9bFEf66m5kA%3D%0A&m=3Dqe7%2B9y3EXPACupTLCUQjCcoT%2BHH9%2FJUBcFFeGYfKLHY=
> >
> %3D%0A&s=3D564f4f05f5c46ee2243f1e20f2a9141db69b519b98cf047e462dc1a971bd12f=
> > b
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
>
>
> --
> -Wilson
> -----
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -Mark Twain
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> 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