Re: USAGE: 'born'

On 11 May, David Peterson wrote:

<snip>

>I want
>whoever posted this to e-mail the author and ask, because this really does
>seem ridiculous to me.

    Mea culpa!  I originally posted the quotation about becoming
(actually, my interest at the time was in the phrase
"giving birth to itself" --- which idea still intrigues me.)
    Unfortunately, the magazine doesn't seem to have supplied
any info on how to reach the author. I myself don't have the
time to try and track him down. If anyone is really interested in trying,
the relevant details are as follows:

Author:        Barry Graham
Article:        Star of Justice (letter from Phoenix)
Magazine:  Harper's Magazine, April 2001, pages 59 -68
Quote from: page  63


    BTW, re "becoming", I'm also a ( young  ;-)  53 ) native speaker
of English. To me, the use of "becoming" in the sense of "attractive"
is ok when referring to clothing of females of any age. I don't think
that I myself would ever use it.
    Just for the record, when I read the article, I did not see the pun
(although I do now). I would never say that something is "becoming"
in the sense of developing. But, IMHO, literary license covers a
multitude of sins, including mangling the lang slightly for effect,
which is the way I understood it to be at the time I read it.


Dan Sulani

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A word is an awesome thing.