beat it up

[Laurence Horn]

At 5:25 PM -0400 3/18/10, Wilson Gray wrote:
>I've been familiar with _knock it out_

cf. _knock one off_

>  since the '40's, but _beat it up_ is
>new to me.

to me too, but I've led a sheltered life.

LH

>
>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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>>
>
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