"Toenailed": of nails

Norm Jensen normjensen at GMAIL.COM
Sat Jan 22 23:56:54 UTC 2011


To toenail nails is to drive them at an angle from the side of a piece
of wood so they protrude out the end and into another piece of wood,
thus attaching the two together, typically perpendicular to each other.

_Tailnail_ is beyond my comprehension.

Norm

On 1/22/2011 12:08 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:      "Toenailed": of nails
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> from Storm Stories
>
> Spoken by a fifty-ish, white female survivor of the Great Malibu
> Canyon Mudslide:
>
> "I saw that two nails had been _toenailed_ into the wood [of a 2x4.]"
>
> Does anyone know what the verb _tailnail_ might mean, just off the top
> of his head?
>
> I can research it for myself, if I decide that I care enough. So,
> don't nobody else be was'in' dey time.
>
> --
> -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
>
> Once that we recognize that we do not err out of laziness, stupidity,
> or evil intent, we can uncumber ourselves of the impossible burden of
> trying to be permanently right. We can take seriously the proposition
> that we could be in error, without necessarily deeming ourselves
> idiotic or unworthy.
> –Kathryn Schulz
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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