OUT OF SIGHT

[Sam Clements]

1876, in HDAS.  If you don't have the two volumes of HDAS, you need to get
them.

Sam Clements

----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael McKernan" <mckernan at LOCALNET.COM>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Monday, November 15, 2004 1:24 AM
Subject: OUT OF SIGHT


> Having done my best to search the ADS-L archives for previous discusion of
> the expression 'out of sight,' and coming up with nothing useful, I, a
> newcomer to the list, but brash enought to already have chimed in on
> numerous occasions (and to have been corrected on several, thanks!) post
> the following query:
>
> Can anyone tell me the earliest use of the expression 'out of sight' in
its
> non-literal meaning of 'extraordinary' or 'particularly special'?
>
> I ask because I have been working on an 1890s personal diary from
> small-town Missouri, USA, which contains an interesting amount of slang
and
> ideomatic expressions, including several uses of this 'out of sight'
> expression as a positive descriptor of various items or events which the
> diarist felt were particularly remarkable.
>
> NB:  this is not the 'out of sight, out of mind' aphoristic formulation
> which I have typically encountered when searching for 'out of sight.'  Nor
> is it a usage which means anything like the literal 'unseeable' meaning.
>
> Here is one example from the diary:
>
> >Fri., Nov. 26, 1897
> >It was chocolate bonbon, some of her own make, and it was just out of
sight!
>
> My own reaction to this phrase is too colored by my memories of it as what
> seemed to be a proprietary expression of youth/counterculture in the late
> 1960s and early 1970s to be very objective...
>
> Thanks in advance for your help.
>
>
>
> Michael McKernan, Ph.D.
>