"in the day"

Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM
Mon Sep 27 14:05:17 UTC 2010


By strange coincidence (and I'm not kidding) a friend of mine used the
expression this morning.  I was so surprised that I didn't whip out my
notebook and interrogate, but I doubt that he got it from Dr. Zorba:

"They were really havin' a high old time in the day!"

JL

On Sun, Sep 26, 2010 at 10:22 PM, 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: "in the day"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Sun, Sep 26, 2010 at 12:01 PM, Jonathan Lighter
> <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Just "in the day."
>
> FWIW, there was once a mildly - if you weren't a woman, at least -
> anti-woman expression,
>
> "Way back when mother was girl"
>
> meaning, like, maybe, a hundred years before the then-present day,
> e.g., ca. 1840. These days, I use only "way back when."
> --
> -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
>



-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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