"brim for a fight" -- I'm done

[Wilson Gray]

"Do me like you would a banana: skin me back and eat me!" was popular
in the early '50's at my Roman-Catholic, Jesuit-run prep school.

And people of my generation have the gall to complain about the
language of teen-agers of today! The major differences seem to be that
modern teens don't pretend not to use such language and girls can talk
dirty, too. In my day, had any girl used the kind of language used by
today's young women, which is pretty much the same as that used by
today's young men, she would have skanked herself out. Of course, it
was also the case, back in the day, that only rogues would have used
any kiind of unseemly language in the presence of girls.

-Wilson

On 4/17/07, Charles Doyle <cdoyle at uga.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Charles Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "brim for a fight" -- I'm done
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> That jocular and punful "Stick a fork in me (him, them); I'm (he's, they're) done" perhaps belongs to the same category as the venerable "Make like a tree and leave" or "Put an egg in your shoe and beat it."
>
> --Charlie
> _____________________________________________________________
>
> ---- Original message ----
> >Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2007 11:38:16 -0400
> >From: Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> >Subject: Re: "brim for a fight" -- I'm done
>
> >
> >At 11:05 AM -0400 4/17/07, Doug Harris wrote:
> >>The phrase 'I'm done' often is preceded, around here, with 'Stick a fork in me'. Is that common elsewhere?
>
> >>(the other) doug
>
> >
> >Yes, but not in the below sense (= 'I've completed that task'), only when the meaning is more like 'eliminated', as when a team is eliminated from contention:  "Stick a fork in them, they're done". YMMV.
> >
> >LH
>
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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

"Experience" is the ability to recognize a mistake when you make it again.

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