[Ads-l] exorbitant/absorbent mixup

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

British Veterinarian and author James Herriot used "absorbent price"
in the dialog of a character.

Date: 1973
Book title: Let Sleeping Vets Lie
Author: James Herriot
Quote Page 28
Database: Google Books snippet. Unverified

[Begin snippet text]
'It nearly shifted your pig, didn't it?' I sniffed at the mixture.
'And no wonder. It smells almost like pure turpentine.'

'Turpentine! Well by gaw is that all it is? And bloke said it was
summat new. Charged me an absorbent price for it too.'
[End snippet text]

Garson

On Thu, May 2, 2019 at 2:10 PM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>
> > On May 2, 2019, at 2:02 PM, Arnold M. Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU> wrote:
> >
> >>> From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Stephen Goranson <goranson at DUKE.EDU>
> >>> Sent: Thursday, May 2, 2019 10:30 AM
> >>> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> >>> Subject: exorbitant/absorbent mixup
> >>>
> >>> From a book review (of 1 Enoch, trans.) at amazon:
> >>>
> >>> "Scholarly work without the typically absorbent academic price tag."
> >
> > i've been off in a fog, musing about how to rate particular academic price tags as light, regular, super, super plus, and ultra absorbency.  there are a lot of ultra absorbent price tags out there, especially in the handbook and Festschrift emporia.
>
> Some of those products are designed for library or foreign markets, which are known to have different standards of absorption than those products intended for personal use.
>
> LH
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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