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When a "Queen" Was a Prostitute
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When a "Queen" Was a Prostitute

Also, is it weird that "ask" has become a noun?

John McWhorter
Jun 4
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When a "Queen" Was a Prostitute
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Queen Elizabeth II at her Platinum Jubilee.

Frank Cook finds it odd that ask is replacing request as a noun.

This is a general thing in English of late, and it’s about starting over.

Think of an earlier example that no one seems to have noticed — using “a dissolve” in filmmaking when the pedant might say that the noun form of dissolve is dissolution. Dissolution is indeed a word, but it doesn’t mean, in actual usage, only the dissolving — it implies something negative, something you’d rather have stayed intact that went to pieces. “Dissolve” cleans away that gunk, and expresses simple dissolving.

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