"They Also Serve Who Only Vote on 'Ain't'" in NYT

[Wilson Gray]

I wonder whether anyone is dealing with "holler at" in its "current"
slang usage. I put "current" in quotes because the supposedly "new"
usage, as in, "Let me holler at you for a minute," "I just stopped by
to holler at you," "The next time that you come by here, why don't you
holler at me?" "All that you really had to do was to holler at me,"
etc., wherein "holler" clearly is not being used as a synonym of
"shout," etc., was used by my late grandparents and is still used in
these and similarly seemingly slangish ways by members of my
94-year-old mother's cohort. That is, WRT BE, this way of using
"holler at" has been "standard" for over a century, at least. Maybe
Skip Gates will deal with it.

-Wilson

On 12/23/06, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> S""bject:      "They Also Serve Who Only Vote on 'Ain't'" in NYT
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/23/books/23word.html?_r=1&ref=arts&oref=slogin
> This makes us gatekeepers...er, AHD Usage Panelists seem a bit like a
> bunch of hidebound fuddy-duddies being slowly dragged into the 20th
> century (not to speak of the 21st), but as they say, there's no bad
> publicity.  Of course, not *all* panelists were interviewed for the
> piece, although of our confreres, Erin McKean and Geoff Nunberg are
> quoted, along with various self-described "mossbacks" and "syntax
> nudniks".
>
> LH, snubbed again
>
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All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Sam'l Clemens

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