[Ads-l] "morale boost"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Here's a good one, undeniably a syntactical, not a lexical, development.

While comparing scuba-diving on a resort beach to diving from a boat
offshore, a fifty-something friend tells me she "resort-dived" in Mexico.

JL

JL


On Mon, Apr 25, 2022 at 8:34 AM Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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."
>


-- 
"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