Cooling my heels

[Beverly Flanigan]

Is anyone surprised??

At 07:47 PM 12/17/2004 -0800, you wrote:
>Picture it:  a classroom at a large state university, 1984.  The topic:
>"Fern Hill," by Dylan Thomas.
>
>Me: "Well, what does 'lilting' mean literally?"
>
>The 25 Freshmen: (Silence.)
>
>Me: Literally. Ordinarily. What's somebody doing when they're [sic] lilting?
>
>The 25 Freshmen: (Puzzlement. Silence.)
>
>Me: I can't believe this. Hasn't anybody heard of a "lilting tune" or a
>"lilting melody."
>
>The 25 Freshmen:  ( Puzzlement. Silence.)
>
>Me: (Puzzlement. Silence.)
>
>A Freshman: Isn't that like a really sad tune?
>
>Me: A sad tune? I don't understand. Why would it be a sad tune?
>
>A Freshman: Well, like flowers lilt when they die?
>
>Me: (Silence.)
>
>The 25 Freshmen:  (Silence.)
>
>As for "cooling one's heels," fawgeddaboudit!
>
>JL
>
>
>
>"Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU> wrote:
>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>-----------------------
>Sender: American Dialect Society
>Poster: "Arnold M. Zwicky"
>Subject: Re: Cooling my heels
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>On Dec 17, 2004, at 3:04 PM, Marsha Alley wrote:
>
> > I said this to a customer today and he said he'd never heard it
> > before. Come to think of it, I don't think I've heard anyone else say
> > it since my family died off. Any feedback from all y'all? (Sorry,
> > couldn't resist.)
>
>google gives several hundred recent hits on "cooling my heels"; i
>didn't try "cool my heels", "cooling his heels", etc. as far as i can
>tell, it's still current.
>
>i am reminded of an intro linguistics class that my partner jacques
>taught some years ago at ohio state. he used the verb "careen", and
>the class, all of them (about 30), maintained that they'd never heard
>the word and had no idea what it meant. but, but,..., he protested,
>here it is in a front-page story in this morning's Lantern (the OSU
>student newspaper). he read the relevant paragraph, about a dreadful
>road accident on campus, but the students professed to have no idea
>what it meant. the rest of the household (including my daughter, then
>a high-school student) was as baffled by this as jacques was.
>
>arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)
>
>
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