Millionaire Matchmaker

[Wilson Gray]

On Tue, Nov 9, 2010 at 7:13 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
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> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: Millionaire Matchmaker
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> From another current episode:
>
> "You got a bangin' body!" Â [Exciting.]
>
Probably as old as hp-hop.

> "She looked like a doll! Like a banger!" [With a bangin' body.]
>
> "We'll go to a pub and have burgers and get our drink on." [Drink a lot.]
>
> "It makes you look frumpty." [Frumpy.]
>

Surely, there must be a way to keep the language off the tongues of
the polloi! :-)

> "There's a situation goin' on in here." [Lifts shirt, flexes abs.
> "Situation" must mean "something interesting."]
>

Do you recall the Jersey Shore guy who called himself "The Situation"?
I.e., always something interesting going on when *he* was "on the set"
(a bit of Hollywood jargon borrowed into StL-BE as a replacement for
the antiquated "on the scene.")

> "I need this girl to loosen up and take the stick out of her ass."
>
> "She's older, she's wiser, she's got her crap together."

Back in '69 at UC Davis, I remarked to a classmate that "I have a
paper due. I better get my shit together." He had no idea what concept
I was trying to express. The expression was already so old in BE that,
as was the case with "fuck over," I had wrongly assumed that even
white people were hip to it. OTOH, youneverknow. Today, I looked up
_beaver_ in the meaning that caused Beaver College, a school for
women, to change its name. HDAS has in it print from 1927. I never
heard it used - in the phrase, "shoot beaver" - till ca.1967. Good
thing. Otherwise, I would have missed the pun in the later National
Lampoon cover that featured a "Canadian *split* beaver."
>
> "You're not allowed to take numbers or business cards from the posse here."
> [A large group of people in the same place.]
>
> "I had some Jewish hottie patotties for Bryce." Â [Attractive guys.]
>
> "NOBODY'S for her. Nobody can ride that ride!" [Succeed with her.]
>

In 1967, heard that idea expressed as "Nobody can split that stone!"

> JL
>
> On Mon, Nov 8, 2010 at 10:22 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:
>
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>> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: Millionaire Matchmaker
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> At 9:52 PM -0500 11/7/10, Wilson Gray wrote:
>> >On Sun, Nov 7, 2010 at 8:11 AM, Jonathan Lighter
>> ><wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >> Â No way did the shikse-looking guy look like a girl. He was big and tall
>> with
>> >> Â a shaved head.
>> >
>> >Yeah. I sorta got that point WRT his lack of genetic femaleness. But
>> >what does that have to do with the claim that _shegets_ is less likely
>> >to be generally, or even specifically, less well-known than _shikse_?
>>
>> --which was also my assumption (see my earlier note on
>> shaygetz/shikse). Â This is one of those (rare) cases where the
>> feminine may well have become the generic for some speakers.

Yes, I see. Said the blind man as he picked up his hammer and saw.

>> A few ghits in support of this reanalysis:
>>
>> But to many of us he's a shiksa guru.
>> Only if s/he's a shiksa! Love is a funny thing!
>> give it up susie he's a shiksa kinda guy.
>> Cuz he's a shiksa, a Shabbos goy
>>
>>
>> LH
>>
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>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
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--
-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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