"smart off" and another metaphorical "north of" on NBC news

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Fri Sep 5 00:25:48 UTC 2014


from the same network broadcast tonight:

1) Black woman commenting on why it might not be a bad idea for the Feds to investigate police practices in Ferguson:
"If you know your civil rights…if you what the police call "smart off" with them, they throw you in the clink for 24 hours."

2) Brian Williams on the newly discovered oversize dinosaur being called Dreadnaughtus (or something of the sort), comments that besides its impressive length, it weighed "just north of 130,000 pounds".  He first said "just north of 130 pounds", then put in the correction.  (There was an earlier piece on obesity in the U.S., so maybe he was thinking in terms of three digit poundage.)

LH
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