[Ads-l] "hail" = characterize

[Margaret Winters]

I wonder if something like "called out" is slightly closer than "characterize" - all the characteristics are negative (to say the least), so there is a certain tone of condemnation rather than dispassionate consideration.

----------------------------
MARGARET E WINTERS
Former Provost
Professor Emerita - French and Linguistics
Wayne State University
Detroit, MI  48202

mewinters at wayne.edu

________________________________
From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
Sent: Sunday, April 9, 2023 11:55 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Subject: Re: "hail" = characterize

[EXTERNAL]

Must be that for every "enormity" or "notorious" or "terribly" that has had
its pejorative stink bleached out, there's a "hail" that has bleached in
the opposite direction, although I've never encountered this one before.
The second law of lexical thermodynamics?

LH
LH

On Sun, Apr 9, 2023 at 10:13 AM Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Daily Beast,
> https://www.yahoo.com/news/inside-ku-klux-klan-plan-032610250.html :
>
> *The Birth of a Nation* set the technical and artistic standards for the
> up-and-coming movie industry and became propaganda for Klan recruitment as
> it hailed Black people as sexual predators, political deviants, idiots, and
> wastes of space when not in positions of servitude.
>
> JL
>
> --
> "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
>

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

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