"pins & needles"?

[Towse]

sagehen wrote:
>
> David Bergdahl writes:

> >--On Thursday, October 10, 2002 8:52 AM -0400 sagehen wrote:

> >> In describing the state of alarm & nervous expectation experienced by
> >> people in the D.C. area because of the recent sniper shootings, a reporter
> >> on NPR this morning used the expression  "on pins & needles" where I'd
> >> have expected "on tenterhooks."  Anyone else find this odd?
> >> A. Murie

> >Nope--heard it all my life (I grew up in the 40s and 50s on suburban LI)

> I wasn't questioning the viability of "pins & needles" (usually occurring
> in reference to restoration of feeling after numbing, for instance), just
> this particular context.

"pins & needles" to me is the prickly feeling when sensation
returns after blood's cut off. Sometimes the feeling is "my
foot's asleep" and when it wakes up the feeling isn't pins n'
needles but something ticklish. My location: California's Bay
Area since 1960 and elsewhere before that. My parents are from
the Boston area and I know that I still have some vestiges of
language from them. Whether pins n' needles is one is a question.

"pins & needles" in an "on pins & needles" sense I might use in
an anticipatory sense. You'd wait with bated breath, on pins n'
needles, to know whether that cute Donny Pardeaux was _really
going to ask you to the Winter Dance. The outcome, in this sense,
is in question, but there's no fear involved.

Alarm & nervous expectation? That would be

   filled with alarm and nervous expectation
   on tenterhooks
   some other words dealing with at wit's end, anxiety, fear,
suspense, stress

"on pins & needles" seems much more benign and far less stressed
than folks in Montgomery County and surrounding areas must be
feeling.

Sal
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