debate on "you did good"

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Tue Aug 14 12:04:34 UTC 2001


My own recollection (as I think I mentioned when we did have that
debate on ads-l) was that there must be a dialect-borrowing source
here because the expression frequently used (including in a certain
radio commercial for an insurance company) is "You done good", where
the preterit is clearly non-standard, and where the meaning is not
the "good" of "Doing well by doing good", i.e. good deeds of the kind
a do-gooder does, but of doing a job "good", i.e. (in the standard
dialect) doing it well.

larry



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