"Calls for" instead of "predicts" or ...

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Percival P. Cassidy - 05 Jan 2009 22:00 GMT

I've lost track of the number of times I've heard something like
"Today's weather forecast calls for snow and freezing rain, with
temperatures in the low 20s."

Now a message from some financial guru (forwarded by our investment
adviser via email) includes: "The outlook for the U.S. economy in 2009
calls for significant weakness in the first quarter...."

!!

When and how did this usage originate?

Perce
(dual-citizen OzBrit -- aka "whingeing Pommie bastard" -- in exile in
"US Midwest)

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Ian Jackson - 05 Jan 2009 22:26 GMT

>I've lost track of the number of times I've heard something like
>"Today's weather forecast calls for snow and freezing rain, with
[quoted text clipped - 11 lines]
>(dual-citizen OzBrit -- aka "whingeing Pommie bastard" -- in exile in
>"US Midwest)

Obviously, it has the meaning of "predict". Maybe it is an imaginative
translation where the "dict" (from "say") has become "call", and the
"pre" has become "for" (a shortening of "fore" - "in the future")? Is it
a resurrection of an archaic expression? Whatever. I don't like it!

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Ian

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John Holmes - 07 Jan 2009 10:59 GMT

> I've lost track of the number of times I've heard something like
> "Today's weather forecast calls for snow and freezing rain, with
[quoted text clipped - 7 lines]
>
> When and how did this usage originate?

It sounds a lot like a non-native-speakerism. Does anyone know of an
idiom in some other language that would be translated that way?

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Regards
John
for mail: my initials plus a u e
at tpg dot com dot au

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Peter Duncanson (BrE) - 07 Jan 2009 13:05 GMT

>> I've lost track of the number of times I've heard something like
>> "Today's weather forecast calls for snow and freezing rain, with
[quoted text clipped - 10 lines]
>It sounds a lot like a non-native-speakerism. Does anyone know of an
>idiom in some other language that would be translated that way?

I'm afraid it is almost certainly a native English speakerism.

It *may* be a truncation of the idea that the forecast weather pattern calls
for, in the sense of "requires", a prediction of "snow and freezing rain".

Organisers of a pop music festival in a field:

A: The audience bookings are double what we expected.

B: That calls for more security people. Arrange it A.

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Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)

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Ian Jackson - 07 Jan 2009 13:57 GMT

>>> I've lost track of the number of times I've heard something like
>>> "Today's weather forecast calls for snow and freezing rain, with
[quoted text clipped - 21 lines]
>
>B: That calls for more security people. Arrange it A.

Unfortunately, the actual weather will do its own thing regardless of
whatever the weather forecast "calls for"!

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Ian

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Garrett Wollman - 07 Jan 2009 17:08 GMT

>Now a message from some financial guru (forwarded by our investment
>adviser via email) includes: "The outlook for the U.S. economy in 2009
>calls for significant weakness in the first quarter...."

>When and how did this usage originate?

I don't know, but it seems unremarkable for me -- definitely a part of
my idiolect.

The OED doesn't cover this sense directly, although it might be
encompassed by "a. To ask loudly or authoritatively for; to order;
fig. to claim, require, demand.", although the meaning "to claim" does
not obviously appear in OED2's quotations.

-GAWollman

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Garrett A. Wollman | The real tragedy of human existence is not that we are
wollman@csail.mit.edu| nasty by nature, but that a cruel structural asymmetry
Opinions not those | grants to rare events of meanness such power to shape
of MIT or CSAIL. | our history. - S.J. Gould, Ten Thousand Acts of Kindness

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Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2009

"Calls for" instead of "predicts" or ...