"The bull is off the nickel."

[Wilson Gray]

I can remember back to the 1946 song, "In the Land of the Buffalo
Nickel," by Louis Jordan and his Tympany Five, and I have a close
friend who went to the same high school as Rod Serling, but "the bull
is off the nickel" is a new one on me. I vote for "Serlingism."

-Wilson

On 1/1/06, 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:      "The bull is off the nickel."
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Way back in 1964 (actually it was just within the past hour on the SciFi Channel), _The Twilight Zone_ aired an episode whose introductory passage (spoken of course by Rod Serling) included the phrase, "It certainly sounds like the bull is off the nickel" (i.e., it sounds like arrant nonsense).
>
>   Google yields no independent appearances. Possibly the buffalo nickel is now such ancient history that the phrase seems to make no sense.
>
>   Or was this a Serlingism, pure and simple ?
>
>   JL
>
>
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