dialect tidbit

[Jonathan Lighter]

Talk about the "return of the repressed!"  My grandmother used to say, "Good night shirt!" though not seriously: it was a humorous way of saying, "Good night, sleep tight!"

I haven't thought of it since the 1950's. I think it was one of those phrases she said she'd learned as a child (approx. 1893-1903).

JL

"J. Eulenberg" <eulenbrg at U.WASHINGTON.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "J. Eulenberg"
Subject: Re: dialect tidbit
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I've heard it simply as "great day in the morning!"

I'll add my great-aunt's "good night shirt!!," in which the shirt was
simply added for emphasis. I never heard her swear, but this one and one
I can't pull together at the moment which started "chicken..." and was
xclearly another of her euphemisms.

Julia Niebuhr Eulenberg

On Wed, 22 Sep 2004, Beverly Flanigan wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Beverly Flanigan
> Subject: dialect tidbit
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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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