Friday, November 16, 2007

Morphology in Action

My colleague Rand Valentine & I both noticed this wonderful sign hanging on the front of a local supermarket:

Re-Grand Opening!

I've been thinking about it and I think it's actually very smart. It's not a Grand Re-Opening, because that would imply that they had been closed, which they haven't been. Rather, they're having a grand opening, again; i.e. 're-' has scope over 'grand opening'. So it makes perfect sense.


Anonymous said...

OK, is this a former linguistics major working for the supermarket or what?

Anonymous said...

I like the permanent sign at another local grocery store which says "This store is being maintenanced daily from..." The progressive tense here seems really whacky to me, but the use of 'maintenance' as a verb is really awesome. I suppose "is maintained" wouldn't give the intended meaning.