Another one

[Roger Shuy]

on 4/24/05 9:54 AM, sagehen at sagehen at WESTELCOM.COM wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       sagehen <sagehen at WESTELCOM.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Another one
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--> -
>
> Roger Shuy writes:
>> ........."That's deeper than a post-hole toad." .... I've never heard this
>> one before >or since and even the native Texan lawyers I worked with
>> couldn't remember >ever having heard it.
> ~~~~~~~~~~~
> I wonder if this was simply meant to suggest a degree of trouble.  A toad
> that had fallen into a deep hole as narrow as a post-hole digger produces
> might well be unable to get out.
> A. Murie
>
I think you're right but I'm actually less interested in the meaning than in
the extent of the use of this expression. These taped speakers used other
colorful language throughout (most of which I was at least familiar), but
I'd never heard this one before and was just asking the list if they had.
I'm getting the impression that "deeper than a post-hole toad" was just a
one-time colorful way of saying something otherwise more prosaic like
"really in this thing deep."

roger