Engineering amazing

[Ben Zimmer]

On Mon, Apr 1, 2013 at 7:19 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>
> On Mon, Apr 1, 2013 at 5:28 PM, Ben Zimmer wrote:
>
> > On Mon, Apr 1, 2013 at 5:09 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> > >
> > > CNN said yesterday that you might want to "get your sexy back" by losing
> > > ten pounds "in time for summer."
> > >
> > > Then some tanned, young, trim guy with surfer hair appeared to tell you in
> > > detail how to "get your sexy back."
> >
> > Perhaps you missed the memo, Jon. Justin Timberlake was "bringing sexy
> > back" in
> > 2006.
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexyback
>
> JT's song is called "SexyBack." The CNN people were unmistakably
> pronouncing it as two words ("get your *sexy* back"), and they made it
> clear that "your sexy" was something you used to have before you made a hog
> of yourself.

The first line of the song is "I'm bringin' sexy back." Any reference to the
return of said "sexy" is very likely a conscious allusion to the song.

For a discussion of the syntactic peculiarity of the title, see:

http://semanticcompositions.typepad.com/index/2007/02/im_bringin_synt.html
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005333.html
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1104

--bgz

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

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