"You can't stop him! You can only hope to contain him!"

Alice Faber faber at HASKINS.YALE.EDU
Sat Oct 21 03:58:01 UTC 2006


Laurence Horn wrote:
> At 10:44 PM -0400 10/20/06, Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:
>> CAN'T STOP HIM + CONTAIN HIM--750 Google hits, 310 Google Groups hits
>> ...
>> I heard the old "You can't stop him! You can only hope to contain
>> him!"  used
>> again in a sports context. It's such a cliche that it's now used in
>> jest,
>> such as when a seldom used bench player makes an  unexpected
>> contribution.
>> ...
>> I can't recall who started this sports cliche.
>
> I don't know who coined it, but it was Dan Patrick (I believe when he
> was still on CNN sports, before jumping to ESPN) who popularized it
> in the ironic sense (of a relatively obscure player who goes on a hot
> streak), I'm pretty sure in a basketball context.
>
> Is that your take too, Alice?
>

Unfortunately, I don't have a good sense of this one. I think that the
ironic sense is restricted to the full sentence (with both clauses).

But, while we're on "contain", what's with the football announcers
talking about "breaking contain"?

--
 =============================================================================
Alice Faber
faber at haskins.yale.edu
Haskins Laboratories                                  tel: (203)
865-6163 x258
New Haven, CT 06511 USA                                     fax (203)
865-8963

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