two cliches

[Wilson Gray]

FWIW, "*in* a world of hurt" has been around in BE, IME, since 1960-.
I've never heard it as used in the 17th-c, cites.

BTW: American Dad has just used "rap" in its universal(?) (Richard
Pryor: "God ain't *never* dug no whole lot of people! Jesus and Moses
the only ones he ever rapped to!") 'Sixties meaning: "I need to
discuss with you the things that a father should rap to his son
about."

-Wilson



On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 10:41 PM, Benjamin
Zimmer<bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
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> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: two cliches
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 9:38 PM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:
>>
>> recently come across: "a sea of woe" and "a world of hurt". Â anyone
>> looked at these?
>
> Oddly, neither show up in a full-text OED search, though EEBO has
> several 17th-century exx for each expression.
>
> Earliest for "sea of woe":
>
> "In Summe, it makes this World a Sea of Wo,
> Wherein we, sincking, swim; tost to, and fro."
> John Davis (1607), _Yehovah summa totalis_
>
> "Who would remaine in this salt Sea of woe?
> In this unfruitfull vale of miserie?
> Who would in sinners pathes delight to goe?
> Since nought there is but sharpe calamitie."
> Richard Braithwaite (1611), _The golden fleece_
>
> Earliest for "world of hurt":
>
> "Besides, what a world of hurt will the ill example of the husband doe
> in the family, eyther in children or servants?"
> Nicholas Byfield (1626), _Sermons upon the ten first verses of the
> third chapter of the first Epistle of S. Peter_
>
> "It is a world of hurt that comes to the Church by impropriations,
> especially in the North parts."
> Richard Sybbes (1640), _Evangelicall sacrifices_
>
>
> --Ben Zimmer
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
-Wilson
–––
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.
-----
-Mark Twain

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