"Do you do Taco Hell?" / "bus" as non-count n.

[Jonathan Lighter]

I believe, FWIW, that I first heard "on break" at the U. of Tennessee in 1974. I strongly doubt I heard it at NYU.  The earlier equivalents, at least for me, were "for Christmas (break - or even "vacation")," "for Spring Break," "for Summer Break (or Vacation)."

  JL

Charles Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Charles Doyle
Subject: Re: "Do you do Taco Hell?" / "bus" as non-count n.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re. "bus":

And then we have such "non-count" uses as "go (travel) by bus (car/train/boat/plane/mule/foot)." Or "jump ship" (though I reckon that's pretty much just an idiom now).

By the way, Arnold: Despite my most ardent effort, I'm not wholly persuaded that "prom" (as in "Who are you taking to prom?" or "I wish our schools had prom on different nights") functions like a proper noun, unless we regard "proper noun" in a way that includes such words (as they occur in certain phrases) as "(back from) vacation" or "(on) leave" or "(at) rest"--which I suppose is possible: a special, nonroutine time or occasion.

Until pretty recently, "He's on break now" sounded odd to me. And there's the unAmerican "Where did you go for holiday?"

--Charlie
_____________________________________________

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



---------------------------------
Any questions?  Get answers on any topic at Yahoo! Answers. Try it now.

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org