[Ads-l] carnage

[Jonathan Lighter]

Who can forget the president's pledge to end "American carnage" here and
now?
To judge by context, he meant "chaos or disaster."

A 2017 episode of TV's "Highway thru Hell" describes the wreck of a
tractor-trailer in British Columbia as "Carnage in the Canyon!"

The show specifically explains that despite the violence of the crash,
nobody was hurt.

Cf. the similar development of "mayhem," which now often refers to kids
yelling and tearing through the house.

JL

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

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org