Dirt Nap

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Sun May 3 13:51:20 UTC 2009


At 5:19 PM +0800 5/3/09, Randy Alexander wrote:
>On Sun, May 3, 2009 at 12:14 PM, Murrah Lee <mclee at murrah.com> wrote:
>
>>  I was speaking with a friend and historian in East Texas recently, and
>>  he used the term "dirt nap" to state that someone had died.  It was
>>  the first time I had ever heard the term, and I thought it was so
>>  colorful that I would report it to the list.
>>
>
>If your interested in even more colorful terms, Johnny Carson had a skit
>once in which he played a co-worker of a Roget's Thesaurus employee who just
>had died.  The skit was Johnny's speech at the wake, which featured every
>euphemism for death that he could think of.  It's on YouTube, and I'd find
>it for you, but YouTube is still blocked in China.  It's easy to find,
>though.
>
>I don't remember if it included "dirt nap".
>
>--
It doesn't--the closest is "tipping the dirt maitre-d"--but there are
some lovely euphemisms and dysphemism included--"time-sharing the
oblong condo", "booked into the Motel Deep-6",...  It really is quite
a nice bit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wetN3qC87mg

LH

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



More information about the Ads-l mailing list