Ribbit! (1965)

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Wed, 9 Mar 2005 16:42:13 -0500, Benjamin Zimmer
<bgzimmer at RCI.RUTGERS.EDU> wrote:

>On Wed, 9 Mar 2005 15:52:01 -0500, Dennis R. Preston <preston at MSU.EDU>
wrote:
>
>>Not "greedep" down Louisville way. It was clearly "needeep" (with the
>>obvious association with "kneedeep").
>
>Do we have Joel Chandler Harris to thank for "knee-deep"?
>
>-----
>Atlanta Constitution, Feb 8, 1880, p. 2/3
>Uncle Remus's Folk-Lore: Brer Fox and the Deceitful Frogs. XIV.
>"Den n'er Frog holler out:
>"'Knee deep! Knee deep!'"
>-----
>
>Full text of the story here:
>http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/Harris2/ch14.html

Making of America takes it all the way back to 1832, though nothing as
canonical as the Uncle Remus tale...

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http://tinyurl.com/3sen7
New-England magazine, January 1832, p. 40
The woods of Virginia are so filled with the sounds of various birds and
tree-frogs, (those delicate sylvans, that have a note clearer than a bird)
that an old traveler calls it "a land of enchantment," where so many sweet
sounds are emited by invisible songsters; he may, however, have been a
little deluded by his admiration, as he affirms that some frogs "emit a
most tremendous roar, louder than the bellowing of a bull, and with a
striking resemblance to articulate words, as hogshead! tobacco! knee deep!
ancle deep! deeper and deeper! Piankitank!"
-----


--Ben Zimmer