[Ads-l] Confusing ancestor and descendant in 1926

[Laurence Horn]

...using his handy descendance.com membership.

On Wed, Apr 8, 2020 at 1:31 PM Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at gmail.com> wrote:

> A word that I think is underutilized is "descendance", eg, "He traces his
> descendance to Cromwell's lieutenant general".
> DanG
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 8, 2020 at 8:22 AM ADSGarson O'Toole <
> adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > Below is an 1893 citation containing the phrase: "He traces his
> > descendant to Cromwell's lieutenant general". I think that the
> > statement probably should be: "He traces his ancestor to Cromwell's
> > lieutenant general" or "He traces his ancestry to Cromwell's
> > lieutenant general".
> >
> > Strictly speaking if you trace your ancestry back to a famous person
> > then you are simultaneously tracing the ancestry of all your
> > descendants back to that same person. However, I do not think that the
> > passage below is really about tracing the ancestry of a single unnamed
> > descendant.
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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