[Ads-l] Attention Garson: new postdating of (metaphorical) "prime the pump"

Ben Zimmer bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM
Fri May 12 17:21:13 UTC 2017


Postdating indeed. Trump's "coinage" has been covered in many places,
including by Mark Liberman on Language Log:

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=32625

I followed up with a selection of pump-priming editorial cartoons from the
'20s and '30s.

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=32649


On Fri, May 12, 2017 at 10:39 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

> From an interview with President Trump (as in Pump) in The Economist [
> http://www.economist.com/Trumptranscript]:
>
> Reporter: But beyond that it’s OK if the tax plan increases the deficit?
>
> Trump: It is OK, because it won’t increase it for long. You may have two
> years where you’ll…you understand the expression “prime the pump”?
>
> Reporter: Yes.
>
> Trump: We have to prime the pump.
>
> Reporter:It’s very Keynesian.
>
> Trump: We’re the highest-taxed nation in the world. Have you heard that
> expression before, for this particular type of an event?
>
> Reporter: Priming the pump?
>
> Trump: Yeah, have you heard it?
>
> Reporter: Yes.
>
> Trump: Have you heard that expression used before? Because I haven’t heard
> it. I mean, I just…I came up with it a couple of days ago and I thought it
> was good. It’s what you have to do.
>
> Reporter: It’s...
>
> Trump: Yeah, what you have to do is you have to put something in before
> you can get something out.
>
>

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



More information about the Ads-l mailing list