bless (adj)
| From: | Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, August 19, 2004, 22:10 |
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So here in the southern US we seem to be in the middle of a change that
I'm not sure how to categorize: the bare word "bless" is acquiring the
meaning of its participle "blessed" (something that has been blessed).
So far I've only seen it in the set phrase "have a bless day", where it
obviously came from a merger of the /t/ and /d/ in "blessed day"
/blEstdei/, but I've now seen it written down in -edless form several
times, and I can't help but wonder how long it will be before this new
meaning of unsuffixed "bless" becomes lexicalized in GAE. It may already
have that status in AAVE . . .
Thoughts? Anyone else run across this?
-Marcos
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