"laid" and other random BE slang in the HDAS

[Jonathan Lighter]

Doug,

I never thought of the rough phonetic similarity between "come the  (old soldier)" and "cut the (fool)."

It may be entirely coincidental, but "come the" had early 19th C. currency in the US and may have mutated into (and been replaced by, where it survived) by "cut the."

It is hard to imagine any evidence that would settle this one way or the other.

JL

"Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Douglas G. Wilson"
Subject: Re: "laid" and other random BE slang in the HDAS
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

>"Slave" = ordinary job has been around for a while, but I have not
>encountered it with "cut." Any related terms?

Is "cut the X" comparable to "come the X" or "play the X" meaning "act
like/as the X"?

E.g., in HDAS: "come the old soldier", "come the possum" = "play possum".

And I THINK I've encountered all of these, although I may misremember: "cut
the fool" ?= "play the fool" ?= "come the fool". Google does appear to show
some examples.

Maybe "cut" can be used with more-or-less arbitrary X, as "come" and "play"
can?

-- Doug Wilson


---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers!