derry-do

Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM
Sat Sep 25 12:38:43 UTC 2010


It's from an amateur review of _Never So Few_ (1959), with Frank Sinatra and
Gina Lollabrigida (now 83, if you can stand it).

So it refers to military rank.

JL

On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 4:45 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: derry-do
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 12:47 PM, Jonathan Lighter
> <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > trumping rank structure
>
> trumping *mere* structure, perhaps? Or something altogether different?
>
> --
> -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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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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