Bomb

[Rachel Shuttlesworth]

I can refer to something as being "the bomb," meaning excellent.
Different from the MIT slang list meaning, but still an AmEng positive
meaning.
Rachel

FRITZ JUENGLING wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       FRITZ JUENGLING <juengling_fritz at SALKEIZ.K12.OR.US>
> Subject:      Re: Bomb
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Isn't bomb=excellence a Britishism?  I remember an episode of Hogan's Heroes in which the heroes are speaking of some performance (in London, I believe) in which the performer 'bombed.'  It was Newkirk who says it.  At first, it makes no sense to the American ear.
> I don't ever recall bomb=excellence in American English.
> Fritz
>
>
>>>>halldj at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU 03/14/05 08:08AM >>>
>
> In the MIT slang list was:
>
> 'Bomb - When performed on a quiz, excellence; when performed on the "East
> Campus Fence", extreme excellence.'
>
> Am I right in thinking that since this list was published (and in general usage
> - I've never been even once to MIT), *bomb* has reversed its slang meaning?  To
> me, at least, in the context of tests (academic or in the more general sense of
> 'doing something challenging'), it now means 'fail'.  In my mental lexicon it
> has always been a shortening of 'bomb out'.
>
> Damien Hall
> University of Pennsylvania

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Dr. Rachel E. Shuttlesworth
CLIR Post-Doctoral Fellow
University of Alabama Libraries
Box 870266, Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0266
Office: 205.348.4655/ Fax:205.348.8833
rachel.e.shuttlesworth at ua.edu