more TV lingo

[Laurence Horn]

At 8:53 PM -0400 4/18/11, victor steinbok wrote:
>There's a good 20 years of evolution between our respective
>experiences--not sure if it's more than that. It's not that we have
>dealt with different people, but the people we dealt with like were of
>predominantly our own age. My experience, as you well know by now,
>essentially started in college, which would have been in the
>mid-1980s. At that time, I've heard both versions--even both versions
>from people from the NYC area. But I've heard much more of progressive
>and plural than non-progressive and singular. And, since then, I've
>heard almost entirely the plural.
>
>VS-)

FWIW, the google counts for "shit ___" are in the same ballpark,
although more of your plurals than of my singulars.  Lots more
plurals for "shitting ____", which makes sense.  No age breakdown
available.  Maybe bricks have gotten smaller over those 20 years, or
excretory muscles stronger.

LH

>
>On Mon, Apr 18, 2011 at 8:43 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>>  FWIW, I've mostly heard people cited as shitting their bricks one at
>>  a time, OED-style.  I've only ever heard it in the present or bare
>>  stem form, as above, never "s/he shat a brick (when...)".  The
>>  progressive, as in "He must be shitting a brick now" seems a bit
>>  marginal but the perfect, with "shit" as the participle, is OK:
>>  "Anyone would have shit a brick".
>>
>>  LH
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org