gripe

[Robin Hamilton]

Does it ever piss down with rain in America the way it does here?

Robin

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From: "Victor Steinbok" <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
Sent: Tuesday, October 19, 2010 2:08 AM
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Subject:      Re: gripe

> ---------------------- Information from the mail
> header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: gripe
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>  Both "pissed" and "pissed off" are attested in AmE and I would judge
> them widespread (I've heard both versions pretty much everywhere I've
> been--and they are both even picked up by foreign English speakers,
> e.g., the Dutch who've never been in the US). There might be some
> distributional difference--e.g., I suspect, "pissed" has a slightly
> narrower context, such as "I am pissed" or "This got me pissed", but not
> "?I got pissed about Alan's promotion." (To my ear, "pissed off" would
> be measurably better here.) Most of the time, however, they are
> semi-interchangeable.
>
> I have never heard "pissed"==drunk in the US outside of British TV shows
> (or English characters in films). But "get piss drunk" is quite
> common--at least among the Boston Irish-American contingent. Then, of
> course, there is the indignity of being "piss poor", but, I suspect,
> that flies on either side of the Atlantic.
>
>     VS-)

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