[Ads-l] "void _out_"?!

[David Champion]

* On 15 Sep 2016, Laurence Horn wrote:

> I think this last one (judging from the web sites I find) is
> different, "a void [out there]", not "a [void out] there'.
>
> But the other ones Wilson cites tend to reinforce a sense I have that
> "out" as a particle is called on to do more work than it used to do.
> Instead of "substitute X for Y" we get "switch out", "swap out", or
> "sub out".  Part of this may of course be a disambiguator for those
> who can say or understand "substitute X for Y" with the sense of
> 'replace x with y', our "reversed" or "inverse" substitute of earlier
> threads.  But that raises the question of why such speakers don't
> simply say "replace Y with X" rather than "switch out X for Y".  I
> think it's partly this "out" trendiness.  Hard to do a Google ngram
> search to (dis)confirm this, for various reasons (cutoff at 2008,
> restriction to book register rather than speech, irrelevant hits),
> but I think it's real, and "void out" for "void" would be another
> instance, where it's the preposition/particle that's carrying the
> load, rather than (just) the choice of verb.

That's my feel.

Computer programmers use the expression "comment out". It means not
simply to add a comment -- usually non-functional text for purposes
of description, explanation, or cheap comedy -- but to change actual
code to a comment for the purpose of deactivating instructions that
previously were wanted, without removing those instructions from the
visual story of the software.  It takes code _out_ of the program by
means of a comment.

"Void out" seems different because taking out is what voiding means, but
I wonder whether the particle in "void out" similarly imbues intent, not
just action.

-- 
David Champion • dgc at bikeshed.us

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