beat it up

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Thu Mar 18 21:25:21 UTC 2010


I've been familiar with _knock it out_ since the '40's, but _beat it up_ is
new to me.

-Wilson Gray

On Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 1:08 PM, victor steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       victor steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      beat it up
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Not one I heard before. From TPM and AJC, reporting on the teaching
> license suspension of one of the gubernatorial candidates in GA:
>
> > ·       Student 1 indicated that educator told her he wanted to take her
> home and “beat it up” (i.e. have sex).
>
>
>
> https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AfKEK8-LWmzhZGNmZDk0bTNfMjRkc3p3N2ZkNA&hl=en&pli=1
>
> Of course, there are plenty of other similar references I have never
> heard. I've heard a similar expression before, but the antecedent of
> "it" wasa lower primate.
>
>
> Another one, from the same report, that had me puzzled:
>
> > ·       Student 15 stated that the educator had told her that he could
> see her cleavage. The educator had once commented that he could see “stuff”
> and she needed to pull her skirt down. The educator had once told her, as it
> pertained to how she dressed, that she was going to get him fired.
>
> I am wondering who made the choice of the word "cleavage"--the
> subject, the student or the investigator. And there is the underlying
> question whether the first two sentences refer to the same incident.
> If they do not, there is no word choice issue.
>
>
> VS-)
>
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