XPost: alt.usage.english, alt.english.usage
From: G6JPG@255soft.uk
On 2025/8/28 7:8:3, Steve Hayes wrote:
> On Wed, 27 Aug 2025 16:40:02 +0100, Hibou
> wrote:
>
>> Le 26/08/2025 à 05:42, Steve Hayes a écrit :
>>>
>>> Another example of something we have discussed here before, This from
>>> the "Carlisle Patriot", 09 Jul 1825
>>>
>>> On 25 Aug 2025 at 16:46, petra.mitchinson--- via list-cumbria wrote:
>>>>
>>>> The last case, was on Monday evening, when he inveigled an
>>>> interesting little creature under the dry arch of Eden-Bridge.
>>>
>>> A language question: what does "interesting" mean in this context?
>>>
>>> It seems to have been quite common for 19th-century newspapers to
>>> speak of "interesting children" or "an interesting child", but I
>>> wonder what it meant?
[snip]
> Yes, but none of the possible answers was very convincing.
>
> With the passage of years, some of those who took part in the earlier
> discussion are no longer with us, and we have some people who weren't
> around back then, so when I came across the term again, I thought it
> might be worth reopening the topic.
>
>
I thought this could be of interest to lexicography, so I copied several
bits of the recent discussion to a lexicographer I know. Here's his
reply (between === lines). I told him I thought he might find it
interesting.
========================================================================
Yes, interesting. Depressing, though, that nobody bothered to look up
the entries for either interest v. or interesting adj. in OED Online:
using just OED2 guarantees that you're not looking at anything the
lexicographers have done since 1989, and in fact for most of the
established words in the language you're mostly looking at what the
lexicographers thought at least 97 years ago - mostly considerably
longer. Not that there's a huge amount that's new in the revised
entries. The use of interesting to refer to someone whose condition
might be 'interesting' in a way that people didn't want to refer to
directly is there, in the specific sense of 'pregnant' (which was added
to the OED in the 1933 Supplement). I suppose it's possible that people
sometimes chose the word for similarly euphemistic reasons that weren't
to do with pregnancy: e.g. some of the references to 'interesting
children' that your correspondent mentions may indeed have been
referring to disability. But it doesn't look as though this usage ever
became strongly established - certainly not as strongly established as
the 'pregnant' sense. And I'd read that book title as using the word in
a different way: being determinedly positive, making the assertion that
if a child has special needs that can be seen as making them
interesting. Not the same as euphemism.
(I didn't know the abbreviation FLK - and neither does the OED - but a
quick search showed me it's medical slang for 'Funny Looking Kid'. Note
made.)
========================================================================
What he's referring to as online: in most cases, if you have a library
card, you have access to the OED online - and you don't have to go to
your library to access it - you can do so from home; just approach it
via your local (probably meaning your county, rather than town/village)
library website, rather than going direct to the OED.
Anyway, thought I'd pass on his reply!
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf
they did so much with so little, now they do so little with so much.
- @richardgregory3684, 2023 (on the Doctor Who Theme)
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
|
