Boughten bread

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:03 AM -0500 12/10/03, Alice Faber wrote:
>James A. Landau said:
>>
>>OT:  two neologisms found in the local newspaper this week:
>>1) after the Eagles-Cowboys game, one member of the Eagle's secondary boasted
>>"We covered our asses off"
>>2) in an article about developers taking over old airfields, someone was
>>quoted as complaining about the developers building "McMansions".
>>Now "mcjobs" is
>>plausible and reasonably obvious in meaning, but what the Mac is a
>>"McMansion"?
>
>This was discussed in a WotY meeting a few years ago. They're
>"luxury" homes in a cookie-cutter type development.
>
>As for "covered our asses off", I don't see what the neologism is.
>"Cover" has been fairly normal football jargon for a fair number of
>years. And adding "our asses off" seems like a perfectly normal
>colloquial intensifier.
>
I think it's the garden path.  "covered our asses" is not a
constituent here, but it looks like it should be, and of course its
meaning is irrelevant to the intended use, as you note--this is just
"to V one's ass off" with V = cover.

larry