dialect tidbit

[Dennis R. Preston]

>Peter is wrong on venue. It is neither familial nor East Texian; in
>my Louisville area pre-school days I had exclamatory "Good night!" A
>little later I acquired "Holy shit!" By Junior High I had learned
>"Fuck a big brown dog" (and some others); it's been downhill from
>there on. He is right on I suspect about fading taboo, as my
>life-long linguistic development clearly shows.

dInIs

PS: Oooops! Could be age-grading rather than change.







>Some of the replies to this message seem to have veered toward literal uses
>of expressions like these, whereas I think Beverly's question had to do
>with figurative uses.
>
>In my childhood (40s and 50s), "Good night!" was my family's all-purpose
>interjection for emotions ranging from surprise to shock to exasperation.
>I wasn't conscious of it fading from our repertoire, but I haven't used it
>or heard anyone else use it in, probably, 40 years or more.  Its demise was
>probably due to fading taboos against the use of mild profanity (I presume
>this one arose as a euphemism for "Good God!").  A few years ago my mother
>mentioned that that was the strongest language her father (who was from
>East Texas) ever used.
>
>I didn't find it in DARE.  The OED has it, labeled "dial." and with a
>single occurrence, from the 19th century.
>
>Did anybody else grow up using this, or was it just our family?  Or is it
>peculiar to East Texas, or just "an age thing"?
>
>Peter
>
>--On Wednesday, September 22, 2004 3:26 PM -0400 Beverly Flanigan
><flanigan at OHIOU.EDU> wrote:
>
>>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?
>
>
>
>*****************************************************************
>Peter A. McGraw       Linfield College        McMinnville, Oregon
>******************* pmcgraw at linfield.edu ************************


--
Dennis R. Preston
University Distinguished Professor of Linguistics
Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian, and African Languages
A-740 Wells Hall
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824
Phone: (517) 432-3099
Fax: (517) 432-2736
preston at msu.edu