An animated-cartoon hillbilly is getting ready to "pah-TAY!"

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Mon Nov 5 19:27:52 UTC 2012


On Nov 5, 2012, at 1:33 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:

> Grinning in anticipatlon, he says to his image in the mirror:
>
> "I'm gon' git sideways! I'm gon' _come undone_!"
>
> Another random example:
>
> Driven - Page 395
> books.google.com
> Toni Picht - 2005 - 568 pages - Preview
> And I can feel it all just building up inside me, like I'm gonna _come
> undone_, you know?
>
> If it wasn't for the old song from the in-the-loose-sense '60's,
> "She's _Come Undone_," I'd otherwise never have heard this expression,
> before. {I'm *assuming* that that phrase is the title. Youneverknow.)
> Not that that's worth losing sleep over. But, it's always weird to
> discover that something that I've always regarded as a hapax is, in
> fact, common.

I think all sorts of things come undone, from cardigan sweaters to zippers.  But another vector here, besides (IIRC) Eleanor Rigby, is the eponymous Wally Lamb best-seller.

LH

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