[lit-ideas] Re: Expectant Father (Was: Tautology)
- From: Paul Stone <pas@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 13:15:03 -0400
>If we are broad-minded enough to apply 'expectant' for a _past_ adverbial
>("She _was_ an expectant mother"), then, via the principle:
>
> Once an expectant mother,
> always an expectant mother
>
>-- then, _indeed_, 'expectant mother' _is_ tautologous (and indeed
>redundant); for, surely, every mother has (to be, at some time) 'pregnant'
>and that's
>what the 'expecting' idiom merely means.
No, once again, you have completely missed my point. My point was that
"Mothers" expect children to do certain things: be born, grow up, love
them, be nice to them, be successful, etc. That's why it's redundant. I was
expanding what most people consider "expectant" to mean "going to have a
baby" to mean, "she always expects me to do stuff".
Now, of course, the same could be true of fathers, but in my experience,
not just with my own father, fathers are less expectant. And besides, no
one EVER says "expectant father", so it doesn't even come into it.
paul
##########
Paul Stone
pas@xxxxxxxx
Kingsville, ON, Canada
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
