_Break nasty_ = "jump salty"

[Mark Mandel]

Interesting. I had not heard or seen either of these idioms before.

"Jump nasty" immediately reminded me of a Dr. John song (N.Orleans, sixties
- present) with the chorus

Jump Sturdy, Jump Sturdy was her name.
She came out the swamp like a crazy fool.

But I don't see any plausible connection. (The song, titled "Jump Sturdy",
is on his first LP, "*Gris-Gris"*, issued in the late sixties.)

m a m

On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 6:04 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> Now in UD, with a surprising-reasonable set of definitions, from 2005.
>
> Otherwise, as far as the Web is concerned, _break nasty_ occurs only
> in the environment immediately before "... habits."
>
> -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
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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