dialect tidbit

[Jonathan Lighter]

My wife and I both recollect "Great day in the morning!" from old, old movies.  We agree that the movies were set out west somewhere.

The Irish phrase you're thinking of is probably "Top of' the marnin' to ye!" widely used by pop cultural leprechauns and (maybe) by Barry Fitzgerald in one of his old, old movies.

OED doesn't include this greeting, but it does have "Top of the morning" as "dawn" from 1669 and 1825 (s.v. "top").

JL
Beverly Flanigan <flanigan at OHIOU.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Beverly Flanigan
Subject: dialect tidbit
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A student of mine from SW Virginia (Roanoke) gave me a phrase that first
sounds like a phatic greeting but really isn't: "Good day!" or "Good day
in the morning time!" or "Great day (in the morning time)!" It's really an
interjection, meaning "Wow! Gosh! Heck!" (her words).

Has anyone else heard of this expression? The student's classmate from
northeastern Virginia was not familiar with it. But the more I think of
it, the more it sounds vaguely like an Irish expression. Ring a bell?


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