Hals- und Beinbruch (was "break a leg")

[Barbara Need]

>   Jan Ivarsson (Jan. 23) writes:
>>
>>Nigel Rees' Dictionary of Phrase & Allusion (Bloomsbury 1993) has
>>the phrase and confirms my opinion:
>>"This traditional greeting is said before a performance, especially
>>a first night (...) Morris (Dict. of Word and Phrase Origins, 1977)
>>has it based on a German good luck expression, Hals- und Beinbruch."
>

Good heavens! I grew up with "Hals und Bein brech" (the vowel difference
may be dialectal, or my mishearing of my mother's non-native German learned
in Zurich--and it should be four words, or not capitalized, or something).
She described it as a skiers' good luck phrase.

Barbara Need
UChicago--Linguistics

(I got WAY behind on my mail!)