Subject
Re: SIGHTING - End to STRANG
From
Date
Body
ALAS, ALACK, dear Comrades all. A big lack. Case closed. Defense rested.
Post is posthumous.
STANG IS DEAD. Actor Arnold Stang passed away 20 Dec 2009 aged 91. Only 5¹
3² but he stood tall and upright to the very end.
Stang played Sparrow, Sinatra¹s side-kick in The Man with the Golden Arm. He
co-starred with the then unknown¹ Schwarzenegger in Hercules in New York
(1970). The billing was Arnold Stang and Arnold Strong!
(Times obit today 20 Jan 2010)
PS: whenever I hear words described as archaic, rare, arcane, or jargonic
[there¹s new one, perhaps], my reaction is SEZ-WHO? Sometimes there¹s some
statistical support, although based on very meager data: there are no divine
word-watchers counting who is saying/typing what & how often, pace web,
webster, wiki, oed, google and the CIA. In fact, it would be impossible for
our omnipresent, never-sleeping lexicographers to know how to divide all our
messy utterances into chunks called words (word being one of the hardest
words to define). It¹s easy to turn off here. We all know what words are. I
would still recommend a glance at
http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/howmany.htm
for a crisp explanation of why easy questions (How many words in a given
language? How many does the average speaker KNOW and how many does s/he
actually USE?) are so hard to answer. It does affect our debates on VN¹s use
of stang etc. How rare is rare? How old is archaic?
Is UNFRIEND (voted Word of the Year for 2009) a NEW word? Noun or verb? Do
we NEED to find it in a dictionary before understanding its meaning/usage,
and accepting it as a REAL word worthy of the word word? Will it survive or
become branded RARE &/or ARCHAIC?
Rarity can be a subjective/anecdotal judgment. Rare often means Never heard
of X (stang, omoplate, szizzydoodle), are you sure it¹s a word? How are
spelling that?¹ Presence in a dictionary CONFIRMS existence,¹ but absence
does not DISCONFIRM.
Archaic means Lord, I last heard (stang) years ago, before the railways
came; we now call it (rail). Calling it (stang), folks would giggle and call
you senile.¹ The speaker may be unaware that in the next County, (stang)
still thrives, and (rail) is just a bird.
SKB
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Post is posthumous.
STANG IS DEAD. Actor Arnold Stang passed away 20 Dec 2009 aged 91. Only 5¹
3² but he stood tall and upright to the very end.
Stang played Sparrow, Sinatra¹s side-kick in The Man with the Golden Arm. He
co-starred with the then unknown¹ Schwarzenegger in Hercules in New York
(1970). The billing was Arnold Stang and Arnold Strong!
(Times obit today 20 Jan 2010)
PS: whenever I hear words described as archaic, rare, arcane, or jargonic
[there¹s new one, perhaps], my reaction is SEZ-WHO? Sometimes there¹s some
statistical support, although based on very meager data: there are no divine
word-watchers counting who is saying/typing what & how often, pace web,
webster, wiki, oed, google and the CIA. In fact, it would be impossible for
our omnipresent, never-sleeping lexicographers to know how to divide all our
messy utterances into chunks called words (word being one of the hardest
words to define). It¹s easy to turn off here. We all know what words are. I
would still recommend a glance at
http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/howmany.htm
for a crisp explanation of why easy questions (How many words in a given
language? How many does the average speaker KNOW and how many does s/he
actually USE?) are so hard to answer. It does affect our debates on VN¹s use
of stang etc. How rare is rare? How old is archaic?
Is UNFRIEND (voted Word of the Year for 2009) a NEW word? Noun or verb? Do
we NEED to find it in a dictionary before understanding its meaning/usage,
and accepting it as a REAL word worthy of the word word? Will it survive or
become branded RARE &/or ARCHAIC?
Rarity can be a subjective/anecdotal judgment. Rare often means Never heard
of X (stang, omoplate, szizzydoodle), are you sure it¹s a word? How are
spelling that?¹ Presence in a dictionary CONFIRMS existence,¹ but absence
does not DISCONFIRM.
Archaic means Lord, I last heard (stang) years ago, before the railways
came; we now call it (rail). Calling it (stang), folks would giggle and call
you senile.¹ The speaker may be unaware that in the next County, (stang)
still thrives, and (rail) is just a bird.
SKB
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/