another query (re catch phrases)

[Wilson Gray]

I don't get out much, anymore. So, the language may very well have
evolved in ways that I'm unaware of, but, IAC, I find it hard to
imagine using either of these in business correspondence.

I'm familiar with _reach out to_ only from TV-cop-show jargon, wherein
it's always used WRT string-pulling. The cops "reach out to" their
police-academy classmates and former partners who have transferred
out,  been promoted, have retired, or whoever in order to have a favor
done.

"I was going to have Smith transferred back to walking a beat, but he
reached out to the assistant chief, an academy buddy of his dad."

"That's the way I roll," back in the day, was the hip reply to a
compliment regarding a person's car. The last time that I looked, it
had evolved through "that's the way that I do things" into a modern
equivalent of _sad *on* you_, roughly, "too bad for you, chump, if you
were lame enough to go for my hype."

Clearly, that would be relevant WRT some business deals. But would
anybody actually express that opinion to a disgruntled customer in
business correspondence?

As Wilhelm Meyer once expressed it, before he had become the great
Meyer-Luebke, "I think not."

-Wilson

On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 11:45 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      another query (re catch phrases)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> For a (British) journalist's inquiry--anyone have anything on
>
> "Thank you (so much) for reaching out to me"
> "That's how I roll"
>
> especially as used in the context of business exchanges (on this side
> of the pond)?
>
> Ben, did you cover these (or other expressions of their ilk) recently?
>
> LH
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> 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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