guy = 'thing'

[Jonathan Lighter]

I will use "dude" in such contexts.

(Query: Is "will + V" a formal, emphatic British way of saying "habitually
+ V"? Or am I seriously losing it? In case I'm not and it is, the tense
intended here implies simple futurity - with just a touch of resolve.)

JL


On Sat, Feb 1, 2014 at 3:18 AM, 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:      Re: guy = 'thing'
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 5:07 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com
> >wrote:
>
> > Common for a long time in ref. to material objects.
>
>
> It was hip in the MIT linguistics dept. in the late '70's, even in
> reference to abstract objects, like the parts of speech: "it's clearly the
> case that this guy is ungrammatical in the relevant environment." WTF?! :-(
> It annoyed the hell out of me, especially when the foreign - uh, I mean
> *international* - students picked it up. There wasn't anything that I could
> do about it, of course, voice crying in the desert and all that.
>
>
> --
> -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
>
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