XPost: rec.arts.comics.strips   
   From: kludge@panix.com   
      
   Cryptoengineer   wrote:   
   >On 1/9/2026 9:28 PM, Ted Nolan  wrote:   
   >> I read somewhere that we get the THE in "he's in the hospital"   
   >> and other inclusions of the definite article by way of the Irish, or   
   >> Irish immigrants anyway.   
   >   
   >I have a unresearched notion that the distinction in the US is   
   >whether the location referred to has an abstract meaning   
   >independent of a particular physical structure, or whether   
   >you're trying to talk about a particular instance.   
      
   It gets weirder in the case of surgery.  It used to be that a person   
   "was in the surgery" when they were having an operation there.  Then   
   they "were in surgery" through the same kind of transformation of the   
   article.   
      
   But now, THAT has been transformed into "he's having a surgery" in which   
   "surgery" has come to mean the procedure instead of the facility.  I   
   don't know how the hell that one came about.   
   --scott   
      
   --   
   "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)