Who knew?! ;-)

[Wilson Gray]

On Sat, Apr 16, 2011 at 4:27 PM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I was thinking of "(one's) ass" as a general intensifier, e.g., "Tell him to
> get his ass out of there." Â The 1821 ex. in HDAS reads: "Major Gram...swore
> he would not budge an inch to save his _****_."
>

Personally, I'm going to go with _life_. If that's not an obscene,
four-letter, Anglo-saxon word, then I have no idea what is!

But, more seriously, WRT to a string like, e.g.

"Can you truly suppose that I have nothing better to do than to pick
up after/behind your arse?"

There is, in general, *not* a one-to-one and onto semantic mapping from that to,

"Can you truly suppose that I have nothing better to do than to pick
up after/behind you?"

Who knew?

--
-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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