Date: 2008-11-25 06:02 pm (UTC)
well, I've raised this a few times in different groups, usually over a drink, and I've always met a consensus - people either sympathized (saying variations on "it's like the people have been stood there, like mannequins") or goggled (if they haven't come across the usage). Sadly I lack the resources to do a proper survey. It seems to me, though, that "no standing" would avoid any ambiguity.

On your activity index, I'd say that while intransitive "stand" isn't very active, transitive "stand" is more so. "Sit," "crouch" and "lie" seem like obvious companions on the activity index. "Sleep" strikes me as a very strange case. How about "drift?"

I guess I never questioned "devotee" because I imagined some implicit agent doing the devoting (and now I'm wondering how you describe the person who devotes an offering). "Retiree" still brings me up short because the sample sentence for retire that comes up in my brain is "I've retired," or "shall we retire?" Although I've never thought about it before, I now see that "he's retired" is ambiguous: he has or he is?
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