Fat lady singing ...

[Jonathan Lighter]

 This is self-evidently a shaggy-dog put-on of the "pluck yew" variety.

JL

"Baker, John" <JMB at STRADLEY.COM> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Baker, John"
Subject: Re: Fat lady singing ...
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Well, here's what I found. From The Age, 11/23/03:

<>

I found references to "fat lady sinks" only as far back as 1988, and they all seemed to be plays on "fat lady sings." For the billiards explanation to have any credibility, I think that at a minimum we would need to find evidence that the term is sometimes used in a literal sense (sinking the 8-ball), and as far as I know there is none.

John Baker


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU]On Behalf
Of Michael Quinion
Sent: Thursday, September 16, 2004 4:42 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Fat lady singing ...


My feeling is that this belongs under the "for entertainment only"
heading as a candidate for a sequel to "Port Out, Starboard Home",
unless of course anybody knows differently ...

> You gave the origin as perhaps being something to do with opera or
> baseball. Actually in the game of pool the black ball was known as
> "the fat lady" (because the No. 8 on it looked like two fat ladies)
> and the original saying was that the game "ain't over till the fat
> lady sinks". Over time, the "sinks" eventually became "sings".

--
Michael Quinion
Editor, World Wide Words
E-mail:
Web:


---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages!