from sci.lang

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On May 24, 2005, at 6:39 PM, i wrote:

> ..."I perish the thought" looks like a blend of the the rather opaque
> idiom "perish the thought" and the somewhat formulaic "I cherish the
> thought"

but not a syntactic blend of the ordinary sort, where expressions
conveying the same import are blended.  here the meanings are opposed.

so maybe this is just an attempt to assign some sort of ordinary
syntactic structure to the odd "perish the thought", by treating
"perish" like an ordinary transitive verb -- well, it appears to have
an object -- and giving it the appropriate subject.  "cherish" and
Madonna might have helped this along, but it could have happened
without them.

arnold