[Ads-l] Hunh? department
Laurence Horn
laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Tue Jul 30 19:39:36 UTC 2019
From an online book review:
"Oh yes, I love a good book that’s unafraid to pull a few punches.”
The remainder of the review mentions “disturbing content”, “violence”, “gore", “blood”, etc., so presumably the book is being portrayed as unafraid to not pull any punches--or unafraid to land a few punches. So there’s been a reanalysis of either “pull…punches” or “a few”, or else simply the oft-encountered problem with sequences of negative words.
LH
------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
More information about the Ads-l
mailing list