On Oct 1, 2005, at 14:32, BrambleLane (Margaret H) wrote:
'Weasely' is a made-up adjective - 'more weasely' carries more
emphasis - and it sounds better.
So it is clearly an invention, we could spell it 'weasel-y' - if we
wanted... ;)
It is a made-up adjective, but I think its origins are sort-of "in
second degree" or "once removed" from the animal itself. I think the
weasel - being a sleek and sinuous animal, hard to get hold of - first
went through the verbal phrase "to weasel out of" something (like
insurers paying out to people <g>). I've known "weasel out" long before
I heard/seen "weasely", and I suspect that was why I had no dubts -
when seeing "weasly" for the first time - as to what it was supposed to
mean; I might not have made the necessary mental leap otherwise.
But, made-up or not, "weasely" is making its inroads into "mainstream
English"... I came accross it in a couple of books recently, which
suggests that people are expected to understand it, even though it's
not yet made it to a dictionary.
Speaking of which, I just this minute checked "weasel" in my "Concise
Oxford", 1988 (7th edition) copy. As a noun: "small nimble
reddish-brown white-bellied slender-bodied ferocious carnivorous
quadruped [etc]". But, even then, it also appeared as an intransitive
verb, though marked as being non-Brit (chiefly US, possibly Canadian,
Australian, etc): "equivocate, quibble, default *on*, get *out* of
obligation". Already on its way towards the "weasel out of"...
Language never stands still; it changes all the time, both by creating
new words and by changing the meanings of old ones. All of those
changes are fascinating to some degree, but it's the ones which are
wide-spread enough and survive long enough to make it into a "general"
(not slang) dictionary that really get my blood a-stir (one of the
reasons I never have enough dictionaries and never throw an old one
away, even as I buy a new edition <g>)...
Hmm...I like weaslier. I work with lots of weasels, each of them
weaslier
than the last.
<VBG> Since I consider Bev (who suggested "more weasly") an "amicable
adversary", I was just yanking her chain, when I suggested that
"weaslier" follows "the rule" better :) As a foreign speaker of
English, I find "the rule" cumbersome - am I *really* gonna *count* the
syllables before I say something? - and use "more/most" almost all the
time, with the exception of a few most basic (basicest??? give me a
break???) adjectives. "The rule" is on its way out, as the above
example illustrates, and is only really used with the older adjectives.
The newer ones - like "weasely" - are far more likely to conform to the
easiest/most comprehensive "generator" of comparative: more. But, as
long as "weasly" as an adjective is still in its lava form... One can
debate, and pick what one likes best, and proffer arguments for either
side :)
--
Tamara P Duvall http://t-n-lace.net/
Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland)
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