[Ads-l] pet, pet, pet

[Laurence Horn]

And presumably not too many of the contexts in which the past tensed verb occurs are equally interpretable as a noun, as in Charlie's datum, where we have the obvious snowclone reading, viz. the puppy's infantile resistance to the command "Get with the program, pup--you've been behaving like a pet long enough, time for you to get a real job".

LH

> On May 31, 2016, at 12:08 PM, Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On Tue, May 31, 2016 at 10:42 AM, Charles C Doyle wrote:
> 
>> I just saw a cute-pet posting on FaceBook, bearing the caption "Puppy
>> Doesn't Want To Stop Being Pet."  You know, "pet," the participial form of
>> "pet."  Or maybe of "pat"?
>> 
> 
> Here's a relevant post by Neal Whitman from 2006, quoting ADS-L discussion
> from 2003:
> 
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__literalminded.wordpress.com_2006_08_25_the-2Dirregularization-2Dof-2Dpet_&d=AwIBaQ&c=-dg2m7zWuuDZ0MUcV7Sdqw&r=wFp3X4Mu39hB2bf13gtz0ZpW1TsSxPIWYiZRsMFFaLQ&m=kjCc12K9agL7377h9V9bS7w-ZG_sYzwUYeZrM6T7KUQ&s=1aAi-vDSmungkFDXj-c-0_0Vui40RN7vU07LsKRI_fs&e= 
> 
> --bgz
> 
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> The American Dialect Society - https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.americandialect.org&d=AwIBaQ&c=-dg2m7zWuuDZ0MUcV7Sdqw&r=wFp3X4Mu39hB2bf13gtz0ZpW1TsSxPIWYiZRsMFFaLQ&m=kjCc12K9agL7377h9V9bS7w-ZG_sYzwUYeZrM6T7KUQ&s=dGy9v-v1_925QEqj-9EV-MNTNUl1Cre47SG0zDNfhow&e= 

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