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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (90547)	4/6/2003 5:28:09 AM
From: Doc Bones	Respond to of 281500

OTWhat about when the wind abates? How about unabated? These are good words which seem perfectly usable to me. "Abate" is still a word, it's just "bate," an abbreviation of it, which has fallen out of use, except for the phrase "bated breath." (Short happens: I think Swift railed against "omnibus" becoming "bus" and "mobile" turning into a "mob.") But poor "bate," orphaned into that one phrase, is slowly being ground into a common word, "bait," through the magic of folk etymology. Seems cruel, but there's an evolutionary logic to it: it's not worth remembering "bate" if it's just used in one phrase. --- Also, have you ever wondered why New Jersey has the most toxic waste dumps, while Washington has the most lawyers? Obviously, New Jersey got first choice. I fulfilled a personal ambition by telling that joke to a lawyer from New Jersey, but alas, she, like most of the lawyers I've met, was a nice, intelligent person. It's getting harder to find people to hate, I guess Saddam will have to do. Doc