two queries: bobwire, know the score

[Wilson Gray]

On Sep 11, 2004, at 1:29 PM, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject:      two queries: bobwire, know the score
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> thanks to having written on reanalytic malapropisms (a.k.a. eggcorns)
> on Language Log, i collect rather a lot of e-mail about particular
> examples.  most recently, "bobwire" and "know the score".
>
> "bobwire" is an old familiar to me.  i assume "barbed wire" > "barb
> wire", by the usual t/d participle deletion, and then "barb" > "bob"
> via a non-rhotic variety.  but i was surprised not to see it in DARE.
> did i somehow miss it, or is it just too widespread to count as
> regional?

FWIW, wrt widespread, "Bob Weyer" is a character in the pun-filled
cartoon strip, "Rick O'Shay," which Stan Lynde, a native of Montana,
has been drawing since 1958.

<http://www.oldmontana.com/comics.html>

And, of course, in the Golden Age of Horse Opera, movies often had
story lines featuring cowboys vs. bobwire-using "sheep herders," as
well as the stereotypical cowboys-&-Indians and black-Stetson vs.
white-Stetson story lines.

-Wilson Gray

>
> on "know the score", my correspondent noted that he'd seen it in
> contexts suggesting a sports origin and in contexts suggesting a
> musical origin (salman rushdie wrote a Guardian column in 1987 entitled
> "Songs Don't Know the Score").  so presumably one usage was the
> original and the other a reinterpretation (a "hidden eggcorn").  my
> correspondent favored the musical story, i'd always assumed it was a
> sports-based metaphor.  checks in some obvious places turned up nothing
> -- so i wonder if there's some reasonably authoritative discussion of
> the history.
>
> arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)
>