GArthurBrown

Again, all the Google Books results that are speaking of abortionists are translations, mostly from French.

Respectfully, the top results for "angel maker" abortion are the blog you linked to (written in 2007 with only the title using the term "angel maker") and the wiktionary entry, with all other results being about murders and "baby-farming." I'm going to suggest there is no historical connotation of "angel maker" to mean abortionist in English, and you've hit on one translated usage and one poetic usage.

I googled it and looked at the Ngram. I didn't find a single example of this meaning in English. Having a similar term in other languages doesn't provide evidence it was used in English. Can you find an example?

I'm not seeing any evidence of the "historical" use of angel maker to mean abortionist. Wiktionary doesn't give a source.

They can be countable or uncountable.

@Jk2 "I saw him in the photograph. I saw him in the film." Feel free to continue to attract downvotes to your baseless answer.

So you're saying it's the visual aspect? That's even less plausible. "I listened to his voice on CD/tape/record." Right now you have a blind guess posted as to why this happens. Let's remove the explanation until we've established a better rationale.

The Q is about the use of the definite article. Your suggestion is that that is somehow related to "the content of the television" being used without the article. This seems unlikely. Just as "I heard his song on the radio" not "I heard his song on radio."

Yet, "I talked to him by phone" is perfectly idiomatic.

@Cascabel Of course it is more pronounced when intervocalic, and this may be true even additional regions as well, but the accent that pronounces it when word final is the Long Island accent, who will indeed say "lonG," among those other accents listed here in the comments.

I associate this with the LonG Island accent (another example). There is a large Jewish population in that area and it is possible that either the Jewish parents originated from there, or this is an element of Yiddish influenced pronunciation.

@Cascabel It's like finger without the -er.

@KannE Then what you are saying is that it could be a mistake? What the Q wants to know is what the expression means. Lots of things might be mistakes, but we can still offer guidance on what the language used means.

@KannE And again I'm saying that whatever the measure of the years, 5 years ago means 5 years in the past (from 2005 that would be 2000, whether calendar or fiscal), and in the last five years means means from whatever date in 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, and whatever date in 2000. This isn't going to become, mystically, 6 years because of the tax code.

@Kanne That has nothing to do with tax years. You are simply saying that the last two years means previous two years. And this makes even less sense when you consider the question.

@KannE Please explain how tax years could change the number of years ago a revenue drop occurred? Because clearly if we are dealing with tax years, then we are talking about tax year 2000 and tax year 2005.

@KannE Do you have a point or are you just interested in being childish? A tax year doesn't change how you count years. A fiscal year that doesn't end on Dec. 31st doesn't change how you count years either, but it could change the actual dates within those years.

@KannE It means you haven't had enough withheld this year or last year. Whether your year is a calendar year or a fiscal year, that doesn't change how you count years. The question is about whether in five years includes the year of the revenue drop or not.

@KannE In IRS lingo, that's just a year (or fiscal year) you are paying taxes for. It doesn't change how you count years.

@MichaelHarvey I understand that. I'm not sure it changes the fact that in 5 years still includes this (tax) year as year 5 and then counts backward (and may or may not be literally 365 days, as some fiscal years in the US can be 52 or 53 weeks).

@KannE Do you mean a fiscal year?

Just like the last two days means yesterday and today, the last two years is last year and this year, and may or may not refer to literal 365-day increments (possibly extending some months into the year before last year).

@Tim What was your comment?

@Mitch No idea how to get through to these guys. They don't seem to understand that if they have the argument and evidence they should post an answer, and they don't seem to acknowledge that this very question has been tackled by Merriam-Webster in an online article and by experts in a book on language evolution. It's like screaming at a wall.

Meanwhile: "'Normalization' originally described a return to a state considered normal. Later, it was used to describe the act of making something variable conform to a standard. Recently, we've seen it used to describe a change in what's considered standard. In this new 'normalization', the standards change to make something considered an outlier 'normal'—not the other way around."

@BenjaminHarman A team of specialists in the evolution of the English language seem to disagree.

@BenjaminHarman It may surprise you to find that the Spanish "normalizar" does not carry the connotation of "to make something abnormal come to be considered normal." And neither does the French "normaliser"

@ChappoHasn'tForgottenMonica Clearly not. It's specifically mentioned in a book on language evolution and an article at MW.com

@ChappoHasn'tForgottenMonica 2 : to make normal (as by a transformation of variables) This is referring to statistical normalization

@LPH Would argue the same thing for radicalize: : to make radical especially in politics?

@JohnLawler Also, both senses I'm talking about are transitive.

@JohnLawler If that's the case, find me an instance of it being used in the new sense before 2000.

Honestly, it will be entirely clear from context whether you are talking about traditional epithets or ethnophaulisms. Half of people think the term is racial epitaph anyway.

Not that this explains the discrepancy, but OED seems to be on the wrong side of the favored spellings here according to the Ngram

@JohnLawler Spelling does, however, have something to do with the English Language.

@JohnLawler It sounds like you are saying it doesn't matter how we spell plurals, or maybe you are rejecting conventions that have established potatoes and mosquitoes vs. "solos" and "avocados."