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Subject:Re: the liaison between or the liaison among?? From:"Janet Swisher" <jmswisher -at- gmail -dot- com> To:techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Date:Thu, 16 Oct 2008 16:32:03 -0500
>From the Merriam Webster's Concise Dictionary of English Usage, citing the OED:
'"[Between] is still the only word available to express the relation
of a thing to many surrounding things severally and individually,
*among* expressing a relation to them collectively and vaguely." Still
the unfounded notion that *between* can only be used of only two items
persists, most perniciously, perhaps, in schoolbooks. ... Noah Webster
in 1828 included in his definition of *between*: "We observe that
*between* is not restricted to *two*." The originators of the
restriction to two, then, ignored the evidence of the two most famous
dictionaries of that time.'
Mrs. Mintz may have been clear about it, but Noah Webster and the OED
make more sense to me. I see nothing wrong with being a liaison
between several parties, as any connecting or communicating you do
happens between two of them at a time. "Among" fails to capture the
collection of binary relationships.
On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 2:38 PM, Dan Goldstein
<DGoldstein -at- riverainmedical -dot- com> wrote:
> Nope -- Mrs. Mintz was very clear about this one back in 10th grade. You
> can't stand *between* three people. If you stand between two people and
> one of them throws a pillow at the other, it hits you instead. If you
> stand *among* three or more people, they can hit each other willy-nilly.
>
> The same goes for communications: At the same time that you're
> clarifying to Bob what Anne really meant, Charlie is telling Dora
> something that you don't hear. You can't serve as a conduit *between*
> all four of them; but if you understand that limitation, you can work
> *among* them very well.
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Keith Hood
>> Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2008 3:30 PM
>> To: TECHWR-L
>> Subject: Re: the liaison between or the liaison among??
>>
>> My $0.02: Use "between." The word "among" makes me think of
>> being "within." A cat among the pigeons is among them, but it
>> surely is not working to help them effect information transfer.
>>
>> The word "between" has connotations of being in position as a
>> sort of conduit, which is, I think, slightly more descriptive
>> of a liaison's work.
>>
>
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