[Ads-l] "bully pulpit"

[Jonathan Lighter]

MSNBC chyron on _Morning Joe_:

"Will Trump's Polling Sink If He Keeps Up Bully Pulpit?"

JL






On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 12:13 PM, <ronbutters at aol.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       ronbutters at AOL.COM
> Subject:      Re: "bully pulpit"
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> -------------------
>
> "bully" still survives (sort of) in its original sense in the frozen
> expression "Bully for you!" Otherwise, my intuition is that nobody who was
> born after about 1899 says "bully" in the sense 'great' or 'powerful';
> those people are not linguistically influential. Therefore, it is not
> surprising that most people interpret "bully pulpit" as a noun-noun
> construction. Most people are not "confused," they just speak 21st Century
> American English. Or so historical linguistics teacheth.
> .................
> JLighter wrote [snipped]:
>
> > But others thought it ["bully pulpit"] meant that the Prez has power to
> bully just about
> > anyone into doing almost anything he says ...
> >
> > The confusion is apparently so frequent that Wackipedia has a note ...
> Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
>
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