Not all that

[Wilson Gray]

What do you mean by the "[sentence intonation] *typically* associated
with the idiom 'it's not all that'"?

-Wilson Gray

On May 4, 2004, at 2:28 AM, Benjamin Barrett wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Barrett <bjb5 at U.WASHINGTON.EDU>
> Subject:      Not all that
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> --------
>
> This morning on the 8 AM PDT news broadcast on 710 KIRO radio in
> Seattle,
> Christopher Glenn used the expression (to be) "not all that". But he
> used
> normal sentence intonation rather than that typically associated with
> the
> idiom "it's not all that".
>
> When I heard it, I couldn't make up my mind whether he was using the
> idiom
> or simply stringing English words together. I wonder if he's adopted
> the
> expression without the intonation...
>
> Benjamin Barrett
> Baking the World a Better Place
> www.hiroki.us
>