"I about to f* died"

No Name Available P2052 at AOL.COM
Wed Oct 6 02:03:32 UTC 1999


I've heard the phrase, "I just about died"(=I nearly (almost) died [usually
from embarrassment, not from an actual life-threatening event]), the meaning
of which was subsequently realized as "I about died" and the more emphatic,
"I about f_ _ _ ing died!"  These expressions were you to relate a simple
past event.  I've also heard the utterance, "I was about to (f_ _ _ing) die"
(where splitting the infinitive, "to die" might be considered an attempt at
infixing [possibly borrowed from agglutinative languages]).    Occasionally,
I have even heard   "I about to have died" used in that same sense, but never
have I heard, "I about to f_ _ _ing died!"  It seems that this usage would
violate the rule of not inflecting the infinitive (if "to" really is an
infinitive marker).  These phrases seem to assume the character of  "Abso(f_
_ _ _ing)lutely," which, if I recall, is a rare example of infixing in
English.  Could an example such as this {"about to" (=nearly, almost), "f_ _
_ing" (=stress/focus), and "die (=become not alive) and [-ed] (=past time) }
mean that the English language is evolving into a polysynthetic language or
simply that it exhibits some of the features of such languages (agglutinating
and inflectional).  Are there other examples?  Or is this "much ado about
nothing"?
                    PAT WILLIAMS



More information about the Ads-l mailing list