What he said. (Wonder how long THAT's been around, and whence it came.) It's

curious that while 'tragedy'/'comedy' is the natural opposition, 'tragedic' is

far rarer. A quick and dirty search on Nexis reveals only 7 occurrences of the

latter item, and most of these seem to represent (to me, at least) pompous sub-

stitutions for 'tragic': the tragedic incident at Bhopal, the tragedic

accident, the tragedic chain of events leading to the death of Elisa (a child

abuse victim in N.Y.), etc. 'Comedic', on the other hand, is quite frequent:

I kept getting 'more than 1000/too many to list' until I limited the search to

post-9/1/97 hits, and then there were still 996. And while I confess I didn't

look at all of them, the ones I did glance at all seem to involve the adj

counterpart to 'comedy' in a dramatic/theatrical context, in most of which

the use of 'comic' would have been inappropriate or misleading. One of the

few instances of 'tragedic' was in fact primed by 'comedic' ("untapped

comedic and tragedic talent"). So 'comedic' might be a fancier way of saying

'comic' (register difference) or a way of specifying 'of or relating to

theatrical comedies' (referential difference). 'Tragedic' is less necessary,

given the absence of a nominal use of 'tragic' (*He wants to be a comic, but

he's really more of a tragic) and the "seriousness" of its adjectival use,

obviating the need for a higher-register alternative.



Larry