[Ads-l] Drop the mike

Ben Zimmer bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM
Sun Jun 12 02:31:23 UTC 2016


Related to "mic drop," nominated in the Most Useful category in the 2015
ADS WOTY voting. In the "Among the New Words" installment in the
forthcoming issue of AmSp (the second one covering WOTY nominees), we
define "mic drop" as "Definitive end to a discussion after making an
impressive point, in the manner of emphatically dropping a microphone at
the end of performance" and provide cites back to 2008. ("Mic drop" is also
in Oxford Dictionaries with a more literal definition.)

On Sat, Jun 11, 2016 at 4:05 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Or, pedantically and usually, "mic."
>
> I've been hearing this a lot on TV lately (like within the past month).
> UD has one ex., from 20
>
> "A phrase describing the action performed after getting the better of
> someone.
>
> "Calling someone out so hard that you just walk away indisputably
> victorious (See 8 Mile)
>
> "'After serving someone, I just drop the mic, and walk away'"
>
> Here's one in imperative form that may not really fit. It seems to
> indicate being stunned:
>
> "My 14-year-old, apolitical daughter came home from school about a
> month ago and announced at the dinner table to me, my husband, and her
> 15-year-old brother: '[Insert name of female classmate] said that
> Hillary Clinton is a liar.' Drop the mic. We all looked at each
> other."
>
> Cf. "Obama just dropped the mic on the White House Correspondents' Dinner."
>
> Not 100% sure what this means.
>
>
>

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