make my cup runneth over

[Benjamin Fortson]

The full (or at least fuller) quote is, "enough native optimism to make a
cup runneth over", from the Boston Globe. "My cup runneth over" is one of
those archaic phrases that is familiar, and likely to be misused by
someone who also does not fully understand archaic morphology. I have
collected many examples of this over the years. I think this is the same
phenomenon as the "let he who" because in my understanding, "he" here is
not hypercorrect for "him", but part of the lofty-sounding phrase "he
who" that one knows from biblical sayings and the like. I would maintain a
distinction between this and the "between he and I" phenomenon. (Fide
Calvert Watkins, by the way, "between he and I" constructions are already
found in Samuel Pepys and Jane Austen, so it's not clear that all of these
are necessarily hypercorrections; they've been kicking around for quite a
while, and it's possible that some are due to hypercorrection, and others
are due to the spread of older constructions aided and abetted by
misapplication of prescriptivist norms.) In other words, when one says
"Let he who...", I don't think the person thought to himself, "I shouldn't
use 'him' because 'him' is incorrect for 'he', so I'll use 'he'
instead", as is the case in other (real) hypercorrections.

Ben