[Ads-l] "Catfight" goes unisex.

Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM
Sat Apr 30 17:48:37 UTC 2016


Radio's "Wait Don't Tell Me!" observes that _Star Trek_ was nearly canceled
after Season 1 because Shatner and Nimoy "got into a screaming diva
catfight."

I noted unisex "diva" here some years back.  As for "catfight," I was
surprised to hear a battalion commander in Michael Ware's documentary _Only
the Dead See the End of War_ warn his soldiers (in 2004) that they'd
probably have a "catfight" in (I believe) Fallujah.

In olden days (as my grandparents used to say) a fierce fight might be
called a "dogfight." The word was applied to aerial free-for-alls  during
WW1. (My spellchecker wants "frees-for-all.")

Since a "catfight" has usually been an altercation between women, this ex.
seems notable.

JL
-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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



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