Or perhaps she was half a panda?
=v= In the long obituary for Kenneth Galbraith in today's Times, I came across this:
Mr. Galbraith married Catherine Merriam Atwater, the daughter of a prominent New York lawyer and a ling, whom he met when she was a graduate student ...
Naturally, I wondered what a ling is. Grrl Friday suggested it was short for "linguist," but a linguist would surely be annoyed by the ambiguous sentence structure -- does the term refer to Galbraith's wife or mother-in-law? According to the dictionary, one of these women is either a fish or a flower.
Linguist. Not a hard question to answer with two seconds effort. Not hard to find proofing errors in newspapers, either.
Posted by Gary Farber on May 2 2006 12:37
=v= My apologies for making my two seconds' effort on April 30th, thereby failing to find something not posted until May 2nd.
Posted by jym on May 2 2006 14:34
Um, the IHT version I linked to, and all the other versions, were also posted on April 30th, Jym. Like it, you know, says. Not a big deal, of course. I was just observing that if you'd googled to check, the answer would have been clear. If you're telling me that you actually did google to check, but couldn't find any info on her on April 30th, well, I don't know why you'd not find the other versions then, but I'd certainly take your word for it that that's what you did.
Failing that, I'm unclear what May 2nd has to do with it.
Posted by Gary Farber on May 4 2006 21:10