Yesterday, a former athletic director for the University of Michigan, known as the developer of modern collegiate sports business practices, died after he suffered a ruptured abdominal aneurysm while driving, and propelled his car into a tree.
The local sports reporters were shook up about it, and remarked on the man's untimely demise.
I wondered at the use of the term "untimely demise", since the man was 87 years old.
Webster's defines "untimely" as "at an inopportune time", or -- and I think this is the sense meant in the phrase -- "before the due, natural, or proper time."
So, can a person whose death comes when he is 87 BE untimely??? What do you understand the phrase "untimely demise" to mean?
It means one sixth of a column inch closer to the bottom of this ****ing obituary (so I can go home and have a pint of bitter), which is perhaps the most stultifying work on a newspaper.
It's also a nice safe trite phrase that only people like you (the conscious discerning ones) would dare to wonder about.
Agreed. Also, I recall hearing a reporter talking about trying to avoid cliches in his writing and the frustration of having them turn up at the hands of some editor or other, who felt that no reference to, say, Elvis was complete without the words "the late, great".
Although this may not be what the writer intended, I think in this case untimely could refer to the unexpectedness of the cause of death. That is, as opposed to the gentleman having a known pre-existing condition likely to cause death. Obviously he had not been bed-ridden and gone for weeks without eating, for ex.
The writer should be commended for not using those two words that causes Editors to tear their hair out : "died unexpectedly."
I think the untimely death is used correctly. If you are gonna have a blood vessel explode what is the best time???
What's wrong with saying that somebody died unexpectedly? Is this a grammatical issue, or a position that no death can be unexpected? I would argue against the latter.
And am I to understand you to mean that an "untimely demise" is one which occurred at an inconvenient time?
My high priestess and mentor Wow, I beg to differments. I don't see any problem with "died unexpectedly." It conveys useful information. If someone is languishing at the end of a lengthy illness, the death is not unexpected.
As for "untimely demise," while the guy was87, it still was an unexpected way to go. However, I don't like that expression either, Sparteye (what on earth is a "timely demise," except maybe in the aforementioned example?), and would use "unexpected death."
>That is, as opposed to the gentleman having a known pre-existing condition likely to cause death.
Commonly referred to as life.
But "untimely demise" is still a stale phrase best left outlest one want to suffer the scorn of the discerning copy editor, whose blue pencil unmercifully spreads Boston Brahmin blood across foolscap.
TEd -- who grew up with the smell of paste in his nostrils from the real cutting and pasting that went on in the newsroom
If you are gonna have a blood vessel explode what is the best time???
Right after you go soundly to sleep.
Could have said "sudden demise", 'cause it was. And TEd, I remember cut-and-paste setups, too, even if only from my high-school newspaper.
A parallel expression, with all of the same attendant problems, is "died before [his/her] time." It could be rationally argued that one dies quite precisely when one's time is up and not a nanosecond before.
Mav ~
"Let me die a young man's death" is an excellent poem. I passed it along to a large number of friends old enough to think about living because they are old enough to think about dying.
Padre
thanks for that, mav. good stuff.
I copy and pasted to a word file for "keeping" somewhere...liked it a lot! Thanks, mav.
I liked it too, mav, but I'm wondering: shouldn't tumour be humour? Or am I missing something... (wouldn't be the first time)
When I'm 73
and in constant good tumour
Yes, very good, mav. A friend of mine wanted to go at 93, shot by a justifiably jealous husband. I want to die at about the same age, smothered under a pile of buff, six-foot Mounties, having just bashed the current Prime Minister with my handbag, which will contain two draft horse shoes.
I like the poem, but would not care to live the way the poet cares to die; I wonder if he isn't a kindred spirit, but only torn to be.
**
As to 'untimely,' hasn't this just become a weak epitaphic colloquialism for people we'd have gladder seen living a bit longer? But I don't really like it, either.
> constant good tumour
Ask Fong, ASp - he understands the theory of puns if not the actual humour!
The longer I think about this, the more it seems to me that "untimely" here is what we call in German
an
epitheton ornans, i.e. an adjective functioning purely as a sort of fig leaf for the nasty noun.
what we call in German an epitheton ornans
German? Sounds more like an unholy alliance of Greek and Latin. But I like the concept.
You cannot probably know that unholy alliance[s] of Greek and Latin are typically German. If you google the expression, most references are to German texts.
The local sports reporters were shook up about it, and remarked on the man's untimely demise
The clue to this incongruous usage describing the death of an 87 year old man from an aneurysm is its source: "the local sports reporters".
Sports reporters write about athletic events and athletes for a living, and, when an athlete dies suddenly from an exotic condition like this, the death is certainly "untimely". Describing this particular death as "untimely" is just an example of hackneyed writing.
If this 87 year old man had died of the same condition at home instead of behind the wheel of a car wrapped around a tree, we would have read that he died "quietly at home", even if a sports reporter had written the story.
This man's death was sudden, but it certainly wasn't "untimely". "Untimely" means "before one's time", not "unexpected".
From an actuarial point of view, this man's death was both "timely" and "expected".
What was unexpected was the place where he landed moments after his death.