antedating of "break a leg"

Amy West medievalist at W-STS.COM
Fri Feb 27 00:24:08 UTC 2009


>Here is "brechen Sie ein Bein" in (I think) proper context, 1908:
>
>http://preview.tinyurl.com/azvkjq
>
>... but my German may not be up to snuff, so please check that I'm not
>misunderstanding something again!

I think you're spot on here. I'm not going to read the whole work,
but Oesterlein has embraced him with great excitement before saying
this and then Ralph says he'll try. So it looks like the
happy/positive context. (I'm a lousy translator: Prof. Cohen will do
a much better job.)

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