"It's alive!"

[Wilson Gray]

George, when I first heard it, it was used almost precisely as
described in HDAS. A couple of GI's were wolfing in the run-up to a
bar fight. One said something like, "Keep fucking with me and I'm
going to get in your ass!" To which his opponent replied, "You got to
bring ass to get ass!" I've always felt that the original sense was,
if you're close enough for you to hurt me, then you're close enough
for me to hurt you. Indeed, on today's Springer Show, this was spoken
by a woman in the audience in reply to threat from a woman on the
stage.

-Wilson

On 2/7/06, George Thompson <george.thompson at nyu.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "It's alive!"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> If I recall, HDAS has this from the mouths of boxers, who evidently mean
> "if he gets close enough to hit me, he'll be close enough for me to hit
> him" -- in order to get my ass, he'll have to risk his own ass.
>
> GAT
>
> George A. Thompson
> Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
> Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Date: Tuesday, February 7, 2006 9:59 am
> Subject: "It's alive!"
>
> > On one  of today's local versions of the Jerry Springer Show, a member
> > of the audience used the exprssion,
> >
> > "You got to bring ass to get ass!"
> >
> > This is the first time that I've heard this "in the wild" [love that
> > phrase! congrats to whoever thought it up!] since I was in the Army in
> > 1960.
> >
> > If the meaning is not obvious, it means to say that you can't get
> > something for nothing. The National Lampoon once put it this way:
> > "Ass, grass, or gas. Nobody rides for free!"
> >
> > -Wilson Gray
> >
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> >
>
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