It's not that the term "mom" doesn't sometimes serve a purpose besides being the tender name you call the woman who gave birth to you.
She would possess immaculate pop-culture credentials just for the tender name check she received from her mother, the soul singer Minnie Riperton, at the end of "Lovin' You," the chart-topping 1975 single she wrote with Richard Rudolph, the musician and Ms. Rudolph's father.
I never met my friend's biological father, I think he was not even an irregular part of their lives, but the stepfather called us tender names (though we were fearful of sitting in his recliner), and when he died my friend told me that her father had died.
Then the people behind the tender, brothers named Jeffrey and Hubert Leach, borrowed $10 million against the value of the stock they had not paid for.
The same uncertainty besets Ryan Adams, in his achingly tender song named after the Starlite Diner, where he awaits his love: "Is it possible to love someone too much?" he asks … "You bet".
The Iraqis have until Friday to say whether they will comply with Mr. Bremer's request that they tender the names of prominent Iraqis to sit on the political council.
Edward did not speak except now and then to say some tender word or name, and hold me tight to him.
Mr. Uyeda, who owns a bar named Tender in the Ginza district, is the inventor of a much-debated shaking technique he calls the hard shake, a choreographed set of motions involving a ferocious snapping of the wrists while holding the shaker slanted and twisting it.
In fact, it seemed on that night that Jackson Browne became the first major cultural figure to directly address the ruins of dashed '60s hopes scattered all around the fading troops of the counter-culture, newly enmeshed in the grim new "struggle for the legal tender," as he named it.
Also, already in the bidding phase, the tender must typically include named persons for each special area.
The hero of the first draft of "Tender is the Night" is named Francis (Fitzgerald's first name) Melarkey ("foolish talk, intended to deceive," according to Webster's) and is in love with the woman who is a stand-in for Sara Murphy.
