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Re: I'm new!

From:The Gray Wizard <dbell@...>
Date:Wednesday, October 25, 2000, 10:34
> From: Nik Taylor > > John Cowan wrote: > > Note the word order in "longue nouvelle", which makes it look like an > > idiom rather than a simple transparent phrase "long short story" (yes, > > we do say that in English sometimes no matter how stupid it sounds). > > No worse than "cold hot dog", IMO. "Short story" is a fixed phrase, at > least in my speech, I say "shórt story", not "shórt stóry", that is, > pronounced as one word, not two.
I wonder if there is a real equivalence between "short story" and "hot dog"? Certainly "long short story" is a bit more aberrant for me than "cold hot dog". Perhaps that is because a "hot dog" is a "hot dog" even before it's cooked, i.e. before it's hot. The term is no longer associated with or characterized by being hot. Nor is it "a dog that is hot." However, a "short story" is still defined as a "story which is short". A "long short story", therefore goes against the norm. All this reminds me of the "yellow green card" of IBM assembler language days, but I'm dating myself here. David