Commemorating
It's Memorial Day weekend in the U.S., and commemorating is on our
minds (
NOAD2, first definition
for
commemorate: "recall and
show respect for (someone or something) in a ceremony").
Commemorating looks back, but
on 5/22
in the
NYT we have
commemorating in advance:
Images from the covers of all seven
Harry Potter adventures will appear on a set of postage stamps to be
issued by the Royal Mail in Britain on July 17, commemorating the July
21 publication of the final volume of the J. K. Rowling stories about
the boy wizard.
Yes, the stamps are being issued four days before the event they
"commemorate".
(Hat tip to the blogger Empty Pockets.)
I can get partway from
NOAD2's
first definition to this use. Here's the third definition:
mark (a significant event): the City of Boston commemorated the 400th
anniversary of the discovery of America
And a couple of further instances of this use from the web:
The major museums of Europe,
commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Armistice of 1918 (
link) [announcement of a series of
exhibitions of the art of the First World War]
This image is being released to commemorate the 14th anniversary of
Hubble's launch on April 24, 1990 and its deployment from the space
shuttle Discovery on ... (
link)
What's being commemorated in these cases is, strictly speaking, the
events of the past, but these events are linked to the present through
an anniversary. The crucial point is that announcements of these
commemorative occasions can be made in advance of them. Now we're
one step away from using
commemorate
for occasions that mark, recognize, or celebrate events without regard
to whether the celebratory occasions follow or precede the celebrated
events -- one step away from bleaching out the temporal-sequence
component of
commemorate.
But why extend
commemorate
into new territory? Why not use one of the available
alternatives?
The usual answer to such a question is that the writer didn't find any
of the alternatives entirely satisfactory, and also found something
attractive in the innovative use. In the
commemorate case, some of the
alternatives are bland:
observe,
mark,
recognize.
Honor might seem too deferential or
solemn for the release of Harry Potter stamps, while
celebrate might seem too festive
and unserious for a Royal Mail action.
Commemorate hits the tone just
about right, though at the cost of twisting the semantics some.
Actually, other reports of the Harry Potter stamps suggest that
commemorate might be appropriate
here. You can google up a
CBC
report that says:
Britain's Royal Mail will issue 11
commemorative stamps to honour the extraordinary success of the Harry
Potter books by J.K. Rowling just before the final volume of the series
goes on sale.
In this version, what's being recognized is not just the last book in
the series, but the book series as a whole;
commemorative is not really
inappropriate here. (But in fact though the quote above is what
Google reports in its page view, the actual page lacks the adjective
commemorative.)
Still,
commemorate
'recognize, observe, celebrate' seems to be reasonably frequent.
Here's
another
commemoration of an event to come:
Next week, the saga of Darth Vader
continues with the release of Star Wars: Dark Lord... To commemorate
this event, Del Rey Books has dispatched Darth Vader and his forces to
a number of bookstores ...
and a couple of "commemorations" of regularly scheduled events:
People's Law School set for next week
... The School of Law historically participates in a variety of
outreach activities to commemorate Law Day, which is May 1. (
link)
MSU to help commemorate World Food Day next week.
Local speakers, presentations by area service agencies and a simple
meal will be part of Mississippi State's observance of 2001 World Food
Day. (
link)
Semantic change marches on. Meanwhile, we can commemorate Memorial Day on Monday.
zwicky at-sign csli period stanford period edu
Posted by Arnold Zwicky at May 26, 2007 01:25 PM