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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 328
enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 328 |
The abuse of "sea change" is just part of the widespread excessive fondness for clichés.I think I'll start calling you the Cliché Policeman, Uncle Bill. 
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858 |
Dear Rapunzel: I use them too often without noticing it in time to be qualified to police them. But one of the reasons slang keeps changing is that people get tired of old phrases. I despise just as many of the new ones as of the old ones. One of the things about clichés that is particularly annoying is to see them used by someone who obviously got the meaning wrong. Which reminds me of something that might amuse you. My wife's favorite grandfather had been a travelling salesman for wire fencing, in the old days when so many of them travelled by train and swapped stories, jokes, and salty expressions. He was definitely henpecked, and his revenge was to teach his wife and daughter some of the salty expressions by using them, but not making clear the naughty side of them. He would get a chuckle out of hearing them repeat them to their extra proper friends, who would also copy them.
I had to explain a couple of them to my wife, to prevent her from having some of her friends think she was too free with unsuitable expression. One of our proper ladies on the board used one of them, and was horrified when I sent her a private message telling her what it really meant. We have to be careful what we copy.
Good to see your posts, better to see more of them Love, Uncle (reprobate) Bill
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Joined: Jun 2001
Posts: 2,636
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jun 2001
Posts: 2,636 |
All this sea change talk is making me queasy(just kidding). Another way to look at it might be insomuch as the sea or ocean is constantly coming and going, tide in tide out, always changing, always constant "nothing new under the sun". A sea change. It may be different at this minute, but it will be the same again. Kind of fits the political sea, eh?
consuelo
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Joined: Apr 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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I think there's a distinction to be made between misuse (or overuse = cliché) of an expression and the evolving language; to wit sea-change, a change wrought by the sea; now freq. transf. with or without allusion to Shakespeare's use (quot. 1610), an alteration or metamorphosis, a radical change so there has been a "legitimate transferral" which has been, in turn, overwrought.
1610 Shakes. Temp. i. ii. 400 Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a *Sea-change Into something rich, & strange. 1917 E. Pound Lustra 193 Full many a fathomed sea~change in the eyes That sought with him the salt sea victories. 1923 J. M. Murry Pencillings 164 The characters which have suffered this sea-change, ‘of whose bones are coral made’, are the only unpleasant characters we remember. 1948 A. C. Baugh Lit. Hist. England II. ix. 173 An interesting paper suggesting that romance is transplanted epic, which has undergone a kind of sea-change in the passage. 1974 R. Helms Tolkien's World ii. 32 Even before The Hobbit was published he was at work on its sequel, a work in which Middle-earth has undergone a wondrous sea change. 1976 Listener 8 Apr. 450/3 The Messianic vision+has undergone some strange sea~changes outside Judaism. 1977 ‘E. Crispin’ Glimpses of Moon vii. 117 He+could, moreover+bring about a sea~change in the image of even the most bumbling police officers going about their duties, so that they emerged as prodigies of intelligence, zeal and kindness.
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Joined: Sep 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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See change in language? Makes sense. But I think you are right, tsuwm, despite the useful distinction you have made, the phrase is probably due for a quiet retirement anywayz™
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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oh, I know -- that's why I put it in "quotes", max. 
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Joined: Apr 2001
Posts: 41
newbie
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newbie
Joined: Apr 2001
Posts: 41 |
Here in the Land of Oz, the term 'sea change' has acquired enhanced currency in the last few years thanks to the eponymous soapie screened on the ABC (that's the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, in this antipodean context). As with Ariel's chanty, there was a bit of a jeu de mot in the title, the set-up being a magistrate and her family who move from the big smoke to a small (seaside) town peopled with small seaside eccentrics - never to be the same again. Sort of The Ghost and Mrs Muir meets Ali McBeal. Without the ghost (or the skeleton). 
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Posts: 1,156
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,156 |
used around the New England seacoast meaning the weather has changed and a cool wind is coming off the seaI thought of that one, too (it happens in St. John's at least three times a day! ), except the odd thing is that's not really a sea change, but a change of wind direction. wow's example is also called a sea breeze or onshore wind.
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Joined: Jan 2001
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old hand
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old hand
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 771 |
One of our proper ladies on the board...Why thank you, Dr. Bill. [demure wave of fan] Now don't you say anything more about my eyes or you'll make me  ...
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