Did the word "enabler" exist before the late 1990s and I just somehow managed to avoid hearing it? If not, how did the world get by so long without it? It's weird how now identifying someone as an "enabler" ends up having an almost diagnostic character to it, although it's like identifying a sickness in two individuals at once. I know that some kinds of now-prototypic "enabler" (e.g., the spouse of an alcoholic) have long existed, but has something changed in our society to enable "enabler" to come into being as a category unto itself.
Addendum for baseball fans: I have a book called The Baseball Dictionary that I bought on a remainder table sometime around 1990. The phrase "walk-off home run" is not in it. I don't know exactly when that phrase was invented, either, but it's interesting how it's now commonly used and there are even statistics on who has the most career walk-off home runs, which of course includes players who hit their walk-off home runs at a time when nobody knew that's what they were, much less counted them as a special quantifiable class of home run.
Addendum for celebrity news followers: I haven't been really following the story at Anna Nicole Smith, but am I correct in surmising that this judge is using the bench to try to launch a successful TV career, where maybe he can have the hour following The Late Late Late Show With Lance Ito?
5 comments:
The OED takes enabler all the way back to 1615. I'd never have guessed. link. Back to the 20th century, I definitely recall hearing it in an undergrad class about women and addiction in 1987.
I remember learning about enablers in health class in middle school (during the height of the just say no era).
this judge seems to out-ito lance by a fair margin...
strange. i just read the phrase walk off pin to describe a wrestling match. where'd that come from? always a good thing when both combatants are still walking, i suppose.
There are non-walk off pins in wrestling?
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