Re: "Wife"
| From: | Tristan McLeay <kesuari@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Thursday, May 29, 2003, 9:16 |
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Steg Belsky wrote:
>On Thu, 29 May 2003 07:20:28 +1000 Tristan McLeay <kesuari@...>
>writes:
>
>
>>... the only senses of 'dam' (as a noun) I was familiar with till I read John
>>Cowan's post, ignoring the homophone 'damn', are an artifical lake generally
>>in a farm, an artificial lake caused by damming a river/creek, and the
>>dam wall used to make the second sense of dam...
>>
>You use "dam" to mean "lake made by a dam"?
>I don't think i've heard of that before.
>
>
Most definitely. Sometimes such dams are called lakes, but I would
definitely call them dams. (By generalisation, natural lakes on farms
may also be called dams. Though I guess the entire thing is a process of
generalisation: dam=dam wall spreads to dam=the lake behind the dam wall
spreads to dam=any artificial lake esp. on farms spreads to dam=any lake
on farms.) As is obvious from that, I distinguish dam walls from dam=the
lake behind the wall. I thought that was the normal manner of things...
--
Tristan <kesuari@...>
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