make my cup runneth over

[Beverly Flanigan]

This makes more sense now.  Thanks.

At 04:15 PM 3/15/02 -0500, you wrote:
>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


_____________________________________________
Beverly Olson Flanigan         Department of Linguistics
Ohio University                     Athens, OH  45701
Ph.: (740) 593-4568              Fax: (740) 593-2967
http://www.cats.ohiou.edu/linguistics/dept/flanigan.htm