A new use of "duh?"

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:03 PM -0500 3/6/06, Wilson Gray wrote:
>You can't catch me every time, Lar. I mea-culpa'd and made the necessary
>correction several hours ago. Nah nah nah nah naah nah! ;-)
>
>-Wilson

Ah, indeed.  The culpa is mea; sorry about the e-mailatio praecox.
On the other hand, I will still stake the claim, until disproved, to
have written the first linguistics dissertation (1972) to include a
treatment of "X doesn't know shit from Shinola" (Chapter 3, fn. 13),
even if I don't provide nearly as systematic an algorithm as you did
for distinguishing the two products in question.

LH

>
>On 3/6/06, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>>
>>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>  -----------------------
>>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>  Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>>  Subject:      Re: A new use of "duh?"
>>
>>
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>  At 7:10 PM -0500 3/5/06, Wilson Gray wrote:
>>  >
>>  >The passage of time probably explains everything. No shit (Sherlock) / no
>>  >shit (Shinola) dates to the late '40's - early '50's in speech. That it
>>  >should have precisely the same meaning a half-century later is not to be
>>  >expected.
>>
>>  Interesting.  I'm familiar with the former of these (which would of
>>  course be transparent in any case, even if I can't quite picture Dr.
>>  Watson muttering the line) but not the latter, but on the other hand
>>  that's the very same old Shinola (brown shoe polish) that shoes...er,
>>  shows up elsewhere in the classic "X can't tell shit from Shinola",
>>  one of my favorite entries in the ass v. hole-in-the-ground
>>  indiscriminabilia sweepstakes.
>>
>>  Larry
>>
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