[Ads-l] "void _out_"?!

[Marc Sacks]

Laurence Horn wrote, "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."

Does "listen up" fall into this category?

I suppose to "hate on" something is related but different: making a verb
intransitive by squeezing a preposition between it and its object. (There's
probably an official grammatical name for this, but I don't know it.)

Marc Sacks

On Thu, Sep 15, 2016 at 1:20 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "void _out_"?!
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> -------------------
>
> > On Sep 15, 2016, at 1:08 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> >=20
> > =46rom a monitory form-letter from the MIT Alumni Association:
> >=20
> > "... we will have to _void out_ your application."
> >=20
> > A simple _void_ is no longer sufficient?
> >=20
> > 71,000 _very_ raw hits. Cf.
> >=20
> > "Take your dog out about 45 minutes after it eats to _void out_ its =
> meal."
> >=20
> > "There's been a big _void out_ there."
>
> I think this last one (judging from the web sites I find) is different, =
> "a void [out there]", not "a [void out] there'.   =20
>
> 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. =20
>
> LH
> > --=20
> > -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
> >=20
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