Search results

MarkHastings wrote (post #141): That's "on the lam", as in 'on the run', 'in flight or escape'. According to the OED, it goes with a (by now outdated?) verb to lam 'to run off, escape, "beat it"'. This is supposedly related to the verb to lame. (And, before anybody asks, beat it is for beat a...

EricKH wrote (post #139): That's like asking "down the drain. What drain?" Looks like a simple variant to me.

Mike Broadman wrote (post #129): same difference = 'one difference' ====> 'no difference' In the collocation one and the same we have conveniently preserved both Proto-Indo-European words for 'one': *oino- 'one' (the numeral, count-noun), going with Latin u:nus and its Romance...

MarkHastings wrote (post #135): Bear in mind that, if this statement has any significance and relevance here, it may mean that the split in the U.S. may have been greatly influenced by the large Irish immigration to the U.S. in the 19th and 20th centuries (and, even in colonial times).

Kevin Thompson wrote (post #131): Please, please, PLEASE(!) see TheoGB's "You American's *could* care less but in Britain we couldn't. Why?"-thread. As I recall there was another whole (but shorter) subsequent thread on the same subject, where respondents said exactly the same thing(s), which...

Scott_J wrote (post #115): This is not a "popular saying", not a statement of fact, but a business slogan meant to convey to customers and the employees serving them that the customer and his concerns come first. And I might add that my experiences with retail employees in recent years...

Andrew Markworthy wrote (post #109) Don't know the meaning, but sounds like the coda (standard ending) of an "old wives' tale" to me. The context is totally lacking, so interpretation is totally ambiguous. Was there a further context? Was this said in response to something you had said to...

MarkHastings wrote (post #104): Uh, I believe the original saying is/was, "Keep your eyes open and your ears peeled", a reference to how animals (particularly predators) make their protruding ears fold back when they're on the hunt and in the chase. Ordinary dogs do this---they "peel back"...

Andrew_A_Paul wrote (post #87): The Carlin joke is based upon homonymy punning, which is to say he's using a different meaning of take 'convey', while normally the expression is "That ( = some action) takes (i.e., receives) the cake (originally, as prize in the cakewalk-contest)', i.e., it...

Andrew Markworthy wrote (post #76): What the heck does that mean? It's very hard to tell by how much you're jesting. These are, in fact, examples of a highly complex system of faunal classification, and are what sociolinguists and anthropological linguists call cryptotypes, cultural...

BrianW wrote (post #85): Quote: "clean as a whistle?" According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), an obsolete meaning of clean is 'clear in sound or tone', which this expression would seem to preserve. Again, evidence that such expressions (here, a folk-simile) may...

Note expressions: nuts batty bats in the belfry toys in the attic crackers bonkers to go to pieces (to go) bananas to crack up These expressions point to an underlying cultural ideology that associates distorted states of mind with fragmentation into large numbers of small items...

Alf S wrote (post#51): For those who get so exercised over the word ordering in the various versions of this saying, it would "make more sense" to look at the historical meaning of the verb have. I believe the saying preserves the older, literal meaning of that verb, which is also found in...

Ken Chan wrote (post #17): That's wholly beside the point! Electronic media spread lots of things around. Some things "catch on" and some things don't. Now, why would that be? I would look to the cultural prestige---or in this case, a sort of "anti-prestige"---of the originators (the...

Kevin Alexander wrote (post #8): Well, ask yourself, how did "shizzle my nizzle" gain its present currency?