[Ads-l] "split of a three-game series"

[Baker, John]

How can the verb not be "salvages"?  I assume it means that the Tribe (presumably a reference to the Cleveland Indians) was performing poorly in a (2-game or longer) series of baseball games, but then they had a barrage of home runs, so the series ended up being split between them and the other team.


John Baker


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Geoffrey Nunberg
Sent: Tuesday, July 21, 2015 12:14 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: "split of a three-game series"

A propos (well, not really), the discussion puts me in mind of a story Peter Trudgill tells, which I mentioned on Language Log back in 2004. Peter was visiting Cleveland and saw this on the sports page of the Plain Dealer:

TRIBE HOMER BARRAGE SALVAGES SPLIT
Peter said he took the page back with him to Reading and posted it on the door of his office, challenging the students in the linguistics program to decipher it (or even confidently identify the verb). He told me he had no takers


Geoff
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