"razor tight" --- (blend on "Meet the Press")

Ben Zimmer bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU
Wed Nov 7 06:09:54 UTC 2012


On Tue, Nov 6, 2012 at 9:05 AM, Ben Zimmer
<bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 4:42 AM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:
>>
>> On Oct 28, 2012, at 12:16 PM, "Cohen, Gerald Leonard" <gcohen at MST.EDU> wrote:
>>
>>> Today on "Meet the Press" David Gregory spoke of the polling in Ohio, with Obama
>>> and Romney each at 49 percent. And he described it as "razor tight".  This is a blend
>>> in regard to the margin: "extremely tight" +  "razor thin".
>>
>> reply on my blog:
>>
>> http://arnoldzwicky.wordpress.com/2012/10/29/razor-tight/
>
> Stephen Colbert had some fun with this on last night's "Colbert
> Report" -- he had clips of four different political reporters
> describing the race as "razor tight":
>
> http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/420764/november-05-2012/-razor-tight--presidential-election

More on the expression in my Word Routes column:

http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/not-so-razor-tight

--bgz

--
Ben Zimmer
http://benzimmer.com/

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