Another non-metaphor

[Dan Goncharoff]

Are you talking about the stuff I would call 'sand'?

DanG


On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 3:13 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Another non-metaphor
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Some may recall my posts on my realization that
>
> "wipe the sleep from one's eyes"
>
> isn't necessarily a metaphor. I didn't realize that because, in my
> foundational, East Texas BE dialect, the word for "sleep" in the relevant
> sense is "cat-butter."
>
> Cf. German, "Die Ansammlung eingetrockneter Sekrete aus den Dr=C3=BCsen des
> Augenlides (_Augenbutter_ oder Augenschleim), die w=C3=A4hrend des Schlafes
> entstehen und sich dann am Lidrand sammeln" and "Die typische Bezeichnung
> der _Augenbutter_ in der Gebrauchssprache ist _=E2=80=9ESchlaf=E2=80=9C_."
>
> I've found another instance of "cat-butter" in a blog by a black man from
> DC. He mentions that his grandmother used the phrase, but he considered it
> to be a kind of "riddle" - inside joke? - that he couldn't figure out.
>
> <sigh!> Language-change in progress.
>
> IAC, in recent weeks, I've had both dental surgery and ophthalmological
> surgery, the former motivating me to look at my teeth with new eyes and the
> latter enabling me to do that.
>
> I suddenly noticed that a portion of the childhood gap between my upper
> incisors had reappeared. A closer examination showed that those incisors
> now looked longer, somehow, than they had been looking.
>
> In a flash of insight, I realized that, a few weeks from the gage of 77, I
> had become, in fact, "long in the tooth," in the literal sense.
>
> Youneverknow.
>
> --=20
> -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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