unscripted speech

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Sat, 3 Sep 2005 18:29:48 +0200, Chris Waigl <cwaigl at FREE.FR> wrote:

>Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>
>>One minor point of interest... though Nagin was using surprisingly
>>"unmonitored" speech (at least for a politician) and kept up moderate
>>cursing throughout the interview, there were still some odd moments of
>>self-repair. For instance, twice he said "lickety-s..." (as if beginning
>>to say "lickety-split"), but then self-repaired and said
>>"lickety-quick".
>>
>So the expression is really "lickety-split"?
>
>The BBC transcribes the passage as "lickety spit", which I thought makes
>sense, but is definitely not what Nagin said, i.e. "lickety-s-quick",
>and "lickety-s-[snaps fingers]-quick" the second time.
><http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4209174.stm>

"Lickety-spit" is a variant that pops up occasionally. The ratio of
"-split" to "-spit" on Google is about 12:1, and on Google Groups about
120:1 (hmmm, something's amiss there...). HDAS has "lickety-split" from
1848 (OED from 1859), with other "lickety-" variants going back to 1831.
OED has one cite for "lickety-spit" from 1961. I would surmise that the
variant is influenced by "lick-spittle", or at least the semantic
connection between "lick" and "spit".

The probable basis for Nagin's avoidance strategy, i.e. the punning sense
of "lickety-split" meaning 'cunnilingus', is dated by HDAS to 1970.


--Ben Zimmer