thick on the subject

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:35 PM -0400 6/15/08, Marc Velasco wrote:
>Hazarding the slings, arrows and rants of the list, I press on...
>
>Maureen Dowd used the phrase "thick on the subject", a phrase with which I
>was not previously familiar (and am thus tempted to assume came into
>existence at the moment I read it).
>
>... and he lectured the bewildered Germans, as though they were _thick on
>the subject_, that Saddam was evil because he "gassed his own people."

I read that, but didn't see it as involving "a phrase" in any
lexicalized or conventionalized sense.  "thick" = 'stupid, ignorant'
(more the latter in this case), about the fact that Saddam was not a
nice person.  I think you're looking for something that isn't there.
'ignorant about the topic' would have been roughly equivalent.

LH

>
>http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/15/opinion/15dowd.html?hp
>
>Does anybody have any information, which in their eternal (or even passing)
>magnanimity they'd like to share, as to origins, original meanings, literal
>interpretations, littoral interpretations, antedatings, favored usages,
>famous utterances, or passages of scripture containing or pertaining to this
>phrase?
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org