“Quick” also had the archaic definition of “alive” (e.g., “the quick and the dead",” which were originally antonyms) and quicksilver moves like it’s alive.
I always hear that claimed. But I have never seen a single attested instance of someone using it in that sense. What I see all the time is the assumption that some dumbass people are bound to misinterpret it sometime or other. Whether anyone has seriously used it in that sense is unconfirmed.
Cite for genuine occurrences of this? I think now everybody just repeats it because they’ve always heard it repeated.
Fowler’s Modern English Usage.
If nobody can produce a single attested example found in the wild, then I remain skeptical that it ever happened.
I suspect most people nowadays would just refer to something that doesn’t catch fire as “fire-resistant” or “flame-retardant.”
“Inflammable” has largely fallen into desuetude.
A “jerk” originally meant something more like “clueless person” or “yoyo.”
I remember being puzzled by a decades-old newspaper comic about a DMV photographer with the punchline “On the count of three…look like a jerk!”
I swear I somewhere read almost this exact same scenario, only the inadvertent insult was “hostess”, which evidently in the future was used in the biological sense.
As in “quicken”, when a pregnant woman can first feel fetal movement.
That does sound familiar
Most people use the word “jealous” as a synonym for envious. But the original meaning described a person who was fiercely protective of their own possessions.
That Isaac Asimov story? I’m surprised that you of all people didn’t recognize it.
I remember the Asimov story - but there wasn’t any implication of insult about “hostess” as I recall
There is a deliberate double meaning of the word “hostess” , explicitly spelled out, as in:
- A person that accommodates guests
- the vector for an infectious disease
Ref. the Steve Martin movie The Jerk, where he plays a friendly, polite, well-meaning idiot.
There was an old cartoon- maybe a Far Side, where a motorist sees a sign “Dip in road” then later a goofy looking guy . I have not heard that second meaning of “Dip” (or maybe a 3rd or 4th) since I was a kid. Nor do the couple of online dictionaries list it.
There’s an old Don Martin cartoon where two roadworkers are arguing, and one calls the other guy a “dip.” Then he accidentally triggers the cement mixer and buries the other guy. Last panel is the finished road, with a large, man-shaped bump in the middle, and a sign that says, “Caution: Dip in Road.”
MAD also ran a fake ad showing a room full of dorky-looking guys enjoying potato chips, with the slogan “Pringles: For All the Dips at Your Party!”
I recall a Hagar the Horrible cartoon where they were throwing a party, and a guest asks Helga “where did you get the dip?” She looks towards Hagar and Eddie and says “oh, he’s been friends with my husband for years.”
Yes, but there isn’t an inadvertent insult because in the future “hostess” is only used in the biological sense.
Johnny Hart.
I’ve never understood what “dip” means. Anyone care to elucidate?
