dollar-a-year men

[Joanne M. Despres]

Funny you should mention it.  A few weeks ago I encountered the
word while reading Dos Passos' _1919_ and had no idea what it
meant.  It was obvious that one dollar wasn't much "jack" in 1919,
though, and that the men referred to were educated and well-off, so
eventually I sort of figured out that it meant an upper-class WWI
volunteer.  It came across in context as a lower-class slang (of
which there's a fair amount in the book).

If I'd seen the word out of context, though, it would have made no
sense at all!

Joanne

On 11 Jul 2005, at 7:59, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:

> On Jul 11, 2005, at 6:25 AM, John Baker wrote:
>
> >         I believe that "dollar-a-year men" refers to the former
> > practice
> > of wealthy individuals serving in government posts for the nominal
> > annual salary of $1.
> >
> > Arnold M. Zwicky:
> >
> > no, i'm not offering this as a novel expression, or tryting to
> > antedate
> > it.  just an observation that it might not be understood by today's
> > readers.  here's George Packer in The New Yorker, 7/4/05, p. 52:...
>
> sorry.  i should have added that i was not asking for a definition;
> i'm old enough to remember dollar-a-year men (by the way, weren't
> there *any* dollar-a-year women?).  what i was wondering about was
> what those of a less advanced age might make of the expression.
>
> arnold