[Ads-l] "fighter plane" again

[Jonathan Lighter]

= 'Armed warplane.'

1990 James Robert Parish _The Great Combat Pictures_ (Metuchen, N.J.:
Scarecrow Press) 303: ONE OF OUR AIRCRAFT IS MISSING...A squadron of
British fighter planes attacks Stuttgart. All return safely to base except
a Wellington bomber.

Parish  (b. 1941) is now "the author of more than 100 books including
biographies, histories and reference works, and is known for his knowledge
of Hollywood legend and lore, fact, and anecdote."

JL

On Sun, May 18, 2014 at 9:15 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "fighter plane" again
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> -------------------
>
> Honestly, I wasn't searching for this:
>
> 2007 Harriet Hyman Alonso _Robert E. Sherwood_ (Amherst: U. of Mass. Press)
> 285: Eventually, Fred finds work with a company that turns scrap metal from
> jet fighter planes into prefab housing.
>
> The reference, of course, is to the same scene in the same 1946 movie with
> the same B-17 as in my last communique'.
>
> Professor Alonso "is professor of history at the City College of New York,
> CUNY, where she currently serves as chair of the Department of
> Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the Center for Worker Education."
>
> For those who hope this was just a trivial slip, I refer skeptics to my
> post of a few years ago noting that Fox News confidently referred to a
> British flyover of WW2 bombers as "fighter jets." That occurred in 2002.
>
> Few nonspecialists, of course, have any occasion to speak of antique
> aircraft, so what the hell? But it's much like routinely calling diarrhea
> "the flu" and a bacterium (or, I suppose, any illness) a "virus."
>
> Is simple ...er, unawareness...ever a lexical issue?  Don't answer that.
>
> BTW, a rebuilt 1920s biplane flew over my house a couple of weeks ago. My
> twenty-something neighbor referred to it as a "bi-wing," which at least is
> in the ballpark.
>
>
> JL
>
>
> On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 3:31 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> > Subject:      Re: "fighter plane" again
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> -------------------
> >
> > On Sun, May 11, 2014 at 4:04 PM, Jonathan Lighter <
> wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com
> > >wrote:
> >
> > > 2013 Martin Halliwell _Therapeutic Revolutions_ 34 [Rutgers U.P.] :
> Fred
> > > sees a decommissioned fighter plane stripped of engines and propellers;
> > he
> > > decides to enter the cockpit, but this only brings back vivid memories
> of
> > > his bombing experience.
> > >
> >
> > Is "pursuit plane" still - if it ever was - used in Britspe, or what?
> >
> >
> > --
> > -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
> >
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> >
>
>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
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"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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