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<div>At 10:52 AM -0500 3/3/01, D. Ezra Johnson wrote:</div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>This from an article in today's New York
Times, about Nisqually:<br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>..."We scoured the area," said
Dr. Brian Sherrod, another "geologist with the</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>Geological Survey, who searched for<br>
"evidence of liquefied soils from an airplane immediately after
"the<br>
earthquake and searched other likely regions by car.<br>
"<br>
""We didn't see boo," Dr. Sherrod said.<br>
<br>
Has this been documented before?<br>
<br>
I couldn't find the bare "boo" on an Internet search, but I
did find<br>
"diddly-boo" which would support an equivalence with
"squat".<br>
<br>
But I thought it was odd for the NYT just to hang that out there like
it</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>would be familiar to all.<br>
</blockquote>
<div>I've never heard diddly-boo (variant of diddly-poo,
perhaps?). But I am familiar with the use of "boo"
itself as a squatitive (on which I have a paper forthcoming), only
with "say" as its governing verb. I assume there's
some connection with Halloween-type scenarios in its origins (see
below). Here are some hits off the web:</div>
<div>=============</div>
<div><font face="Geneva" color="#000000">"We take 100-percent
depreciation," he said, eyeing the shark, "and the IRS
didn't say `boo' about it when we got audited."</font><br>
<font face="Geneva" color="#000000"></font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva" color="#000000">Is it that you only have bad
things to say? You didn't say boo to the nice lady (Ahem!) who
responded with her tips and perspectives.<br>
<br>
In the first half I didn't say boo because we were losing<br>
</font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva" color="#000000">the few thousand fans who
showed up in the snow Sunday night didn't say boo when the game was
over.<br>
</font>==============</div>
<div>and one that shows what I think is the origin of "boo"
as a squatitive</div>
<div>==============</div>
<div><font face="Geneva" color="#000000">I didn't do anything to
scare you. Why I didn't even say,</font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva" color="#000000">'Boo'.</font></div>
<div>==============</div>
<div>The generalization from "(not to) say boo" to
"(not to) see boo" is a typical move for squatitives, from
"squat" itself (originally limited to "(not to be)
worth squat" and "(not to) know squat") to Fr.
"pas" (now the standard marker of negation, originally =
'step' and limited to motion verb contexts = 'not walk a step').</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>larry</div>
<div><br></div>
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