"pull vacuum"

[Wilson Gray]

At the L.A. Dept. of Water & Power, we said "pull _a_ vacuum." But
then, this is the same organization that spoke of "on _the_ line,"
whereas other power companies spoke merely of "on line."

-Wilson

On 12/18/06, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
> Subject:      "pull vacuum"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> If this is in OED, I haven't found it.
>
>   Our car repairman explained that because something or other was "gunked up," some other thing was "pulling vacuum."
>
>   My wife tells me that when she majored in chemistry in the '60s, this was a common idiom. She reports that a vacuum pump was always said to be "pulling vacuum" when it created a vacuum.  My impression is that the car guy meant that something was laboring against a vacuum.
>
>   Google confirms the idiom is real.  Is it syntactically like "ride bus" ?
>
>   JL
>
>  __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Sam'l Clemens

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