[Ads-l] Color me ______

Stephen Goranson goranson at DUKE.EDU
Sun Sep 5 14:30:06 UTC 2021


“Color me skeptical,” I replied in an exchange, the context of which seems not worth detailing here.
My vocabulary experience featured, besides coloring books, a song in 1962, “My Coloring Book,” sung by Sandy Stewart then by Kitty Kallen, lyrics by Fred Ebb (available online). Brief searching indicates an uptick in “color me [something, not necessarily a color]” from 1962.
OED colour, v. refers to a bracketed quote of 1910,  T. W. Hanshew Man of 40 Faces iii. 86   ‘I think it's Margot's gang.’ ‘Oh, colour me blue! Them beauties? And in London?’.
I considered whether that meant blue as in cold, since the character, in a nighttime stakeout wanted hot tea. But there are other overlaps, including “Now strike me pink or blue but what in the name of fur are you?” one bear asked another in a 1908 Lone Hand cartoon at GB. And “strike me pink” can be antedated, e.g. 1892 and in 1893 in fiction by H. B. Finlay Knight, the latter: “ I'll tyke my bloomin' davy, s'welp me Bob , and strike me pink ," said the old man , in what appeared to be his mother-tongue.’ [GB] [More quotes in HDAS and Green’sDoS]
Here’s an unconfirmed GB snippet, maybe from Dental Surveyor, 1944:
I am sick – Color Me Green . Next month I will feel better because I placed my advertising in Dental Survey . In fact I'm using Dental Survey regularly from […]
SG

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



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