One email abbreviation that's taken off is 'OT' for 'off-topic'. It's now common on the American Dialect Society's ads-l, and elsewhere. For most linguists, it's too easily confused with 'Optimality Theory', so I haven't taken it up. At any rate ...Is there any tradition in the United States of spontaneous, grassroots parties to celebrate the inauguration of a new president? Did Reagan spark such things in 1980? Maybe Kennedy in 1960? I've read some history of the early Roosevelt days and there was certainly a sea change in public sentiment, but I don't remember anything about parties — but then with Prohibition still on, maybe they kept it quiet?
The missus and I have gotten a string of invitations, after trying to figure out something clever to do and then failing eventually. The first part was last night — a blast, with a zillion people watching the HBO replay of the stuff on the Mall, and the last is next weekend. This event is being marked with a kind of enthusiasm I'm pretty sure I've never seen. Is this happening in other places? I've certainly gotten enough emails from outside the U.S. from people who are very pleased with events, so maybe the whole world will be dancing tomorrow?
Image from here, a somewhat different kind of Obama party.
5 comments:
We're having an Obama party in Malta tomorrow!
Beautiful! Enjoy!
Surely you can cope with a "word" having to meanings? Surely context would tell you whether Optimality or Off-Topic was wanted?
Right, in normal use it would be fine, but as a headline on a post, which is what it would have been here, there's potential confusion.
We *definitely* enjoyed!!
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