Thursday, December 08, 2005

Hello! You've been greeted.

A new way to use "to greet" as found in a catalog of greeting cards:
Are the holiday cards greeted?
Yes and No! The holiday cards come greeted with the words "Happy Holidays" or they can be ungreeted, please specify when ordering.
The un- prefix does not exist, AFAIK, in the transitive version (I greet you!, but no I ungreet you!).

It does represent economy -- the more traditional way would be something like "come with preprinted greetings" or the like; greeted surely is a lot shorter.

So, this usage is passive (the cards are greeted), which implies a differently transitive verb to greet meaning "to add a greeting to," right? I wonder if the folks at this company sit around at meetings and say things like Should we greet these cards? We should subpoena their emails.

No comments: