evidence for "gen up" rather than "gin up"

[Jerome Foster]

FWIW Rush Limbaugh on his radio program today  used the phrase "gin up"
twice as in "The Democrats tried to gin up the African American vote." (This
comment is presented purely as a linguistic note."







----- Original Message -----
From: "David Bergdahl" <einstein at FROGNET.NET>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, November 06, 2002 5:45 AM
Subject: Re: evidence for "gen up" rather than "gin up"


> Brock Meeks says his usage derives from "gin" rather than "engine" or
> "gen"--so if the RAF usage for "gen up" is correct, then we have two
similar
> phrases with different sources; in a response to an e-mail he writes:
>
> As I learned it (from my father as a kid) and have always used it during
my
> writing career, I always took it to be a throwback to the Prohibition Era
> days of the 1920s in which people resorted to making Gin, the alcohol, in
> their bathtubs.  This of course gave rise the term "bathtub gin" but it
also
> took on new meaning, to "gin up" something, is, to my knowledge, to create
> something outside the normal scheme of things.
> ________________________________
> "Raffiniert ist der Herr Gott, aber Boshaft ist er nicht"
> --Albert Einstein