Re: "Wife"

Tristan McLeay scripsit:

> 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.)
Well, m-w.com, which is definitely a dictionary of American English,
lists both senses, and indeed gives the "body of water confined by a wall"
sense first = oldest (as the documentation for this dictionary says).
So it's current American English that's innovative here, for once.
Evidently the generalization has gone the other way.

Similarly, the word "ditch" in AmE has come to signify a trench
(originally it was a Saxon doublet of Norse "dike"), but not so in
Hiberno-English.

--
The man that wanders far                        jcowan@reutershealth.com
from the walking tree                           http://www.reutershealth.com
        --first line of a non-existent poem by:         John Cowan

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