stick a fork in - - I'm done

[Fred Shapiro]

On Wed, 18 Apr 2007, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:

>> The breathtakingly informative Yale Book of Quotations has the following:
>>
>> You can stick a fork in him folks -- he's done.
>>         Jay Hanna "Dizzy" Dean, Quoted in _Berkshire Evening Eagle_
>> (Pittsfield, Mass.), 25 Ju;y 1944
>
> As noted here by Barry Popik back in Dec. 2003:
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0312b&L=ads-l&P=14675

Thanks for pointing this out, Ben.  In scores of instances, the earliest
evidence for items in The Yale Book of Quotations is based on discoveries
by Barry Popik, often magnificent discoveries.  He is given special
recognition among the Research Editors thanked in the front matter for the
book.

Fred Shapiro


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
Associate Librarian for Collections and     YALE BOOK OF QUOTATIONS
   Access and Lecturer in Legal Research     Yale University Press
Yale Law School                             ISBN 0300107986
e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu               http://quotationdictionary.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

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