Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2007

Yes.  I don't hear the word nowadays, so I think maybe "attachment" is
used.  There was also "garnishment", which is used, I think, in the
court documents.

It is possible that the use of the everyday term, garnishee (etc) has
dropped out of circulation (if it has) is that such topics can be
"confidential", and not available for job applications, and the like.
Most often, the garnishment was either a recovery of support in the case
of court ordered separation, divorce, etc. or was done as a way of
avoiding a jail sentence (especially for the wage-earner in a family).
Thus, these civil charges would not be an impediment to the obtaining of
a job for these people.
The prospective employer, not wishing the extra court orders, paying the
money to other than an employee, for example, would not like that.

Some people lost their long-term employment because of this.  (For
example, my father had to pay support and court costs, while still
married to my mother.  But he was a drunk and his employers were more
likely to fire him because of the drinking and family disturbance, than
the court entanglement.  The employer was being given power to make
moral judgements, rather than simply be an enforcing agent of the court.
This is pretty much of a mish-mash, so I hope Mr. Lieblich would explain
more.  I am particularly unsure of the civil rights/job rights area.)

I think it's just degenerated to "garhish[ed]".  At least I think of
that as degeneration.  Maybe it's not.  As for garnishing one's wages, a
little cilantro on the ol' paycheck goes a long way.

HVS (or somebody else of the same name) wrote thusly in message
<Xns98AAB875980B6whhvans@62.253.170.163>:

I have heard of "garnishee" over here in the UK. It's a rarely-used legal
procedure, a sort of last-chance saloon used mainly by the Inland Revenue.
It's different apparently to an "attachment to earnings", though since the
end result is the same ([even more] money disappears from one's salary
before one gets it) I'm not certain what the difference is.

One possibility is that a garnishee extracts the entire amount due in one
lump, while an A2E extracts it in instalments.

HVS <harvey.news@ntlworld.com> had it:

AFAICR I learned this word from a Peanuts cartoon, although I can't
now recall the rest of the strip.  I think Snoopy was sitting atop
his kennel, typing;  part of the letter was "Garnishee Order!".

Yes: garnish, garnished, garnishing.

Google returns 41,300 "garnish wages" to 1210 "garnishee wages."

--Jeff

On 31 Dec 2006, HVS wrote

I'll post a generalised thanks for responses -- I guess it is,
indeed, a term that's changed since I was there.

I suspect Blinky's right in seeing it as a (predictable and normal)
degradation of a narrowly-specialised term to a more familiar one.

[snip]

As a lawyer in Illinois, before retirement to CA, I had quite a lot of
experience with wage garnishments, wage attachments, and other
creditors' rights.  In Illinois, lawyers would say "they're garnishing
his pay" (not "garnisheeing" -- "garnishee" was a referemce tp the
employer-source of the wages in question).  An attachment of earnings
was different from a garnishment (not "a garnish") in that it applied
on an on-going basis, while a garnishment would apply to a particular
pay check -- the latter being a remedy much more easily obtained than
the on-going attachment.

Now I'll brace myself for hostile commentary.

Aloha ~~~ Ozzie Maland ~~~ San Diego