[Ads-l] "morale boost"

[Jonathan Lighter]

I can't help quoting myself from 2015:

>At some point, probably within the past ten or fifteen years, I began
jestingly to employ the new verb to "alien-abduct."   I've said to people
who were exceptionally tardy or hard to reach, "I thought you might have
been alien-abducted."

>To "alien-abduct" was not consciously based on any formal pattern, but it
does seem in line with current verbal trends.

>Update: Many raw Google hits, and GB affords an early example from a book
I've never heard of.  Great minds and all that:

>2000  Carole Nelson Douglas _Cat in a Kiwi Con_ (N.Y.: Forge) 112: Perhaps
a coconut was alien abducted to the Kohl Kompendium and forced to propagate
with a radiator brush.

On Mon, Apr 25, 2022 at 8:17 AM George Thompson <george.thompson at nyu.edu>
wrote:

> Russian troops bypassed a couple cities south of Izyum to surprise-take the
> settlement of Kurulka,
>
> GAT
>
> On Tue, Apr 19, 2022 at 1:21 PM Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Verb.
> >
> > CNN: "He's trying to morale-boost his nation."
> >
> > JL
> >
> > --
> > "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
> truth."
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society -
> >
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.americandialect.org&d=DwIBaQ&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=v2Wtu7DQZxSBMSJv-oEMNg&m=3LyHlb3xhY6WtJNw4-ghm5NufikR4qdrbeN4Ya02m4JiNb7vfcSpyE14occKyjLH&s=haAW6kmIw-rdKxyZFAEPJPgWTxuHlwitKxRTD6Jnubk&e=
> >
>
>
> --
> George A. Thompson
> Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
> Univ. Pr., 1998.
>
> But when aroused at the Trump of Doom / Ye shall start, bold kings, from
> your lowly tomb. . .
> L. H. Sigourney, "Burial of Mazeen", Poems.  Boston, 1827, p. 112
>
> The Trump of Doom -- also known as The Dunghill Toadstool.  (Here's a
> picture of his great-grandfather.)
>
> http://www.parliament.uk/worksofart/artwork/james-gillray/an-excrescence---a-fungus-alias-a-toadstool-upon-a-dunghill/3851
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


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

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