Vals Kilmer (like "attorneys general"?)

[Jonathan Lighter]

The U.S. Olympic Hockey Team was nicknamed "Team U.S.A." after  (probably even during) its "miracle" upset of the "unbeatable" Soviet team in the 1980 Winter Games.

  This was an especially dramatic moment because the USSR had just moved into Afghanistan, and many commentators were prophesying nuclear doom just around the corner.  (Because Jimmy Carter had allegedly made our military defenseless. I vividly remember an op-ed writer in the _Washington Post_ reporting that he had already secured two kinds of pills for himself and his family : anti-radiation and suicide.)

  Since then, though, infotainment science has demonstrated that the hockey upset was the actual turning point of the Cold War, leading directly to the fall of the Soviet Empire barely more than a decade later.

  Hence "Team America" for all our guys 'n' gals.

  JL


Charles Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Charles Doyle
Subject: Re: Vals Kilmer (like "attorneys general"?)
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And why, during the last few cycles of Olympic games, has
the American team become "Team America"?

--Charlie



>And Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>
>>>>
>
> The subtitle of the 1978 miniseries _Holocaust_ was "The
Story of the
>Family Weiss"
>[http://library.maricopa.edu/ipac20/ipac.jsp?
profile=cgc2&index=BIB&term=1
>94741#focus]. I don't know whether this construction was
simply an
>imitation of Yiddish and German syntax, or whether it was
once also common
>in English.
>
><<<
>
>"The Swiss Family Robinson"
>"The Brothers Karamazov"
>
>
>m a m
>
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http://www.americandialect.org

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