"Sorry about your luck!"

Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM
Tue Dec 13 17:36:59 UTC 2011


Some fifteen years ago I heard a blue-collar white-guy type angrily
exclaim on the Springer show (more than once, IIRC) "Sorry about your
luck!"

It meant something like, "I care even less about your misfortune than
somebody who could or couldn't care less!"

Yesterday a completely different individual was quoted on CNN as
tweeting/facebooking the same phrase just before committing a murder
suicide.

So it's definitely sarcasm.

A Google search turns up thousands of exx., some of which (in theory)
are not sarcastic.  Cf. the time-honored "Tough (luck)!"

Anyway, during the Vietnam War a corresponding phrase was "Sorry about
*that*!"  It generally meant, "If you think I'm sorry, you really
*are* a jerk," or words to that effect.


JL


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

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



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