"How ADJ is that?" (1970)

[Wilson Gray]

The expressions "How fine is that?" and "How bad is that?" were in
common use among white GI's as far back as 1959. It's too bad that
there weren't portable tape-recorders available at the time to record
such expressions in the wild, just in case that someone might wonder
about them a half-century later! ;-)

-Wilson

On 2/20/06, Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "How ADJ is that?" (1970)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On 2/20/06, Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
> > A few months ago there was a query on the alt.usage.english newsgroup
> > about the rhetorical question "How ADJ is that?" used to mean "That's
> > very ADJ." It was pegged as a '90s expression, perhaps popularized by
> > "Seinfeld" or another TV show.
> >
> > http://groups.google.com/group/alt.usage.english/browse_frm/thread/b9aa704c07e978d4/
> >
> > But here it is from 1970, in a passage from Jim Bouton's _Ball Four_
> > (also notable for the use of "greenie" = 'pep pill'):
> >
> > -----
> > [Gary] Bell is a funny man.... He's got an odd way of talking. Instead
> > of saying, "Boy, that's funny," he'll wrinkle up his face and say,
> > "How funny is that?"
> > Or he'll say, "How fabulous are greenies?" (The answer is very.
> > Greenies are pep pills -- dextroamphetamine sulfate -- and a lot of
> > baseball players couldn't function without them.)
> > (p. 81 of 1990 Wiley edition)
> > http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0020306652/
> > -----
>
> Here's a later example from ballplayer talk:
>
> -----
> Los Angeles Times, Aug 22, 1979, p. E2
> "He didn't like the way I ran onto the field," says [Dave] Kingman.
> "Now, how asinine is that?"
> [HNP Doc ID 652276122]
> -----
>
> > Bouton presents this as idiosyncratic usage, so was it simply
> > percolating for two decades before its '90s popularization? A cursory
> > database search finds "How cool is that?" in the relevant sense from
> > 1985, in a column by Washington Post sports columnist Tony Kornheiser:
> >
> > -----
> > Washington Post, Oct 11, 1985, p. F1
> > Fourth and goal from the one. Dynastic Green Bay left with one last
> > play, trailing, 17-14. The NFL's most celebrated team coached by its
> > most celebrated man, and the quarterback bops into the huddle taking
> > requests. Now, how cool is that?
> > -----
>
>
> --Ben Zimmer
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org