[Ads-l] "eat, breathe, and sleep"

Arnold Zwicky zwicky at STANFORD.EDU
Sat Apr 11 11:32:49 UTC 2015


> On Apr 11, 2015, at 4:04 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> 'To be entirely dedicated to.'
> 
> Quite familiar to me for decades. Not in OED.
> 
> TV promo: "Amy eats, breathes, and sleeps Beauty!"

on Language Log:

Eric Bakovic, Snowclone shortening, 11/14/05
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/%7Emyl/languagelog/archives/002646.html

on the snowclone “X eats, drinks, and sleeps Y” ‘all X does is Y, ‘all X does is (related to) Y, X has an all-consuming dedication to Y’; shortened to “X sleeps Y”

Mark Liberman, Eating, drinking, sleeping snowclones, 11/15/05
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002647.html

"this is a remarkably "modular" snowclone, allowing a wide variety of conjoined verbs beyond eat, drink, and sleep, in numerous permutations and combinations"

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