hang vs. hung

[Jonathan Lighter]

HDAS reveals that a "Chinese landing" was the name among World War I birdmen for a dangerous landing made with "one wing low."  Get it ? Get it ?

  In precisely the same vein, ex-birdman William Faulkner observes without explanation at the very beginning of his first novel, _Soldier's Pay_ (1925), that the ex-birdman character Julian Lowe was nicknamed "One Wing."

  "One Hung Low" is also the name of the protagonist of a coarse item of British folk verse, set in the mysterious East, whose title can hardly be mentioned with propriety here.

  Aw, hell, it's "The Street of a Thousand Arseholes."

  JL

Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Wilson Gray
Subject: Re: hang vs. hung
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"Trail in the Sand," by One Hung Low

-Wilson

On 11/22/06, Dave Hause wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Dave Hause
> Subject: Re: hang vs. hung
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I use that as "horses are hung, men are hanged."
> Dave Hause, dwhause at jobe.net
> Waynesville, MO
> ----- Original Message -----
> From:
> To:
> Sent: Wednesday, November 22, 2006 10:05 AM
> Subject: hang vs. hung
>
>
> A hoary joke that I first heard 50 years ago; "Did you hear about the
> plastic surgeon who hung himself?" When I first heard it, I didn't
> understand it
> because I didn't realize that "Man is he hung!" meant his penis was
> unusually
> large--AND because "hung by the neck until dead" seemed perfectly
> grammatical to
> me. "I'll be hanged" was an expression that I did not associate with causing
> someone to die by the rope-around-the-neck method.
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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--
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 Clemens

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