[Ads-l] quotation marks for emphasis

[Jonathan Lighter]

> I like that “both…or…”, nicely apropos given the source.

Much as I'd like to take credit, it was merely the result of
cyber-ineptitude.

JL

On Mon, Jun 5, 2017 at 2:26 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

> > On Jun 5, 2017, at 2:01 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> wrote:
> >
> > Generally reviled, as around " 'wire tapping'," which may thus be
> > interpreted as both "I really mean it!" or "Don't take me literally!”
>
> I like that “both…or…”, nicely apropos given the source.
>
> >
> > Early ex.? :
> >
> > ca1859 in Emily Dickinson _Complete Poems_ (ed. T. H. Johnson) [Boston:
> > Little, Brown, 1960] 70: Oh what an afternoon for Heaven,/ When "Bronte"
> > entered there.
>
> Maybe the idea is that while there were several possible (or perhaps two
> relevant) Brontes referred to, we would recognize (given E.D.’s strong
> partiality toward Jane Eyre) that her “Bronte” would necessarily be
> Charlotte.  Naaah.
>
> LH
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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