Show Out

[Indigo Som]

Yes, exactly what I was about to say: “showing out” does not actually feel like the same thing as “showing off” to me. “Showing out” feels like something between “acting out” & “showing off”, but closer to “acting out”. Say about 80% act out, 20% show off.

On May 31, 2014, at 9:01 PM, Automatic digest processor <LISTSERV at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> wrote:

> On May 31, 2014, at 4:03 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
> 
>> On Fri, May 30, 2014 at 10:45 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> FWIW, "show(ed) off" doesn't work here for me; "went wild/crazy" (or for
>>> the ballplayer "went nuts" or "blew his top") seem more like it.  (And for
>>> me a binky is only a pacifier, but that's just me.)
>> 
>> 
>> In the words of Stan Freberg, "That's right! That's right!" To do any of
>> those things is to "show out." IMO, the only commonality between "show out"
>> and "show off" is that both a person showing out and a person showing off
>> need at least one witness. And "show out" in the relevant sense is never
>> transitive.
>> 
>> Suppose that, for some reason, someone suddenly snatches a pacifier,
>> whether binky or not, out of a baby's mouth. The baby could respond to that
>> stimulus in a variety of ways. In my experience, pulling out the binky
>> revealed a baby showing off just one of the cutest, little, toothless,
>> baby-smiles that you could ever hope to see. OTOH, the baby might could've
>> just showed out, tantrum-ing its ass off.
>> 
>> 
> So the "out" here is related to the one in "act(ing) out”. LH

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