[Ads-l] QOTY
Jonathan Lighter
wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM
Wed Sep 26 19:57:30 UTC 2018
There are lots, aren't there?
Bret Stephens in yesterday's N.Y. Times:
"[Ted Cruz is] the type of man who would sell his family into slavery if
that’s what it took to get elected. And...he would use said slavery as a
sob story to get himself re-elected."
This is a more amusing variation of the classic ex. of "ad misericordiam,"
viz. a man convicted of murdering his parents pleads for mercy on the
ground that he is a poor orphan.
I don't know the origin of the earlier version, but I read it in a logic
textbook, maybe 45 years ago.
JL
------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
More information about the Ads-l
mailing list