too digging

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>HDAS lacks this; if "digging" is taken as = "interesting", then does
>this expression offer a possible source for the jazz sense of "dig"?
>
>In Georgia, any thing a little uncommon is said to be "too digging."
>         Commercial Advertiser, August 20, 1817, p. 2, col. 3

This "digging" is in DARE. The first citation, dated 1820, is
probably the same as the above. The last DARE citation is from 1872.

DARE gives for the meaning: "Remarkable, unusual; dear, expensive."
Other sources give only the "dear"/"expensive" meaning and other
instances which I find by quick Google have this sense. Only the
earliest one in DARE seems to represent "remarkable"/"unusual" ... so
_maybe_ this was an unusual variant or a misunderstanding by the author.

I suppose "digging" = "expensive" _may_ have been a metaphor
indicating "rapacious"/"exploitative" (cf. "gold-digging").

-- Doug Wilson


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