RT list: Common Or Garden

I _love_ Horn's style. R. Carston, you made my day!
 
He is so rich in expressions -- and wait till I get to R. Carston's essay!
:))
 
"what's sauce for the cardinals", etc.
 
Now he is talking, on p. 12 of this Chomskyan discovery of late 1972
vintage which Horn refers as a 'garden-variety conversational implicature'.
 
What a wondrous thing the OED is. I see that it was Coles who first used
the 'v' vel of disjunction in "Adam in Eden":
 
 
[1657 W. COLES Adam in Eden xxix. 59
 
But the Common or Garden Nightshade is not dangerous.]
 
 
-- surely implicating that it _does_ look like it were.
 
1892 Autobiog. Eng. Gamekeeper (J. Wilkins) 67
 
It was as large as a common or garden hen.
 
1896 Daily News 16 Oct. 3/4
 
Such common or garden proceedings not being to the taste of Noa.
 
1897 Westm. Gaz. 4 Aug. 8/2,
 
I have to make use of a common or garden expression been ‘rushed’ in this
matter.
 
--- But Horn is right. It's _never_ *common* (even though the OED has us to
 'cf. 'common or garden' when checking 'garden-variety'):

1787 W. WITHERING Bot. Arrangem. Brit. Plants (ed. 2) II. 699 The stem and
bunch of flowers is a *garden variety. 1908 Fort Wayne (Indiana) Daily News
 13 Mar. 8/5 The story told by the girl is a regular thriller and puts to
shame the offerings of the garden variety of stock company. 1983 Garden
Design Autumn 10/1 In the garden variety ‘Aureomarginata’, they are
longitudinally striped and margined with yellow. 2000 Economist 15-21 July (Review of
Books section) 3/2 Instead of any serial killer or garden variety nutcase,
there is..a quasi-supernatural presence that may or may not be entirely of
this world.

This reminds me of the 'hot bed' of linguistic philosophy that Grice
reminisced Oxford as being. ("The Life and Opinions of H. P. Grice"). And I was
_not_ surprised when I checked that Grice's garden (well, at St. John's)
has the hottest.
 
Cheers,
 
J. L. Speranza
 
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Received on Thu Jul 2 22:47:26 2009