Date:  Fri, 24 Oct 1997 15:21:15 EDT
From:  Larry Horn <LHORN[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]YALEVM.CIS.YALE.EDU>
Subject: "Bless you"

Mark Mandel writes:
>Beverly Flanigan writes:
>> On "Bless you" specifically: It is of course intended as a
>> "tail wag" (referred to generally as phatic communication).
>Since "phatic" means 'relating to speech', that expression always
>looked strange to me, until I discovered that its originator had
>not written it! (Whoever it was) wrote "phatic *communion*", which
     [It was Branislaw Malinowski --LH]
>was misread and misquoted by generations of linguists more ready
>to see a word relating to the transmission of information (v.s.)
>than to the closeness of souls.