whistling in the dark

[Jonathan Lighter]

I remember him. His column appeared in the New York _World-Telegram and The Sun_.(That's one paper. When the _World-Telegram and The Sun_ merged with the _New York Journal-American_ and the _New York Herald-Tribune_ in 1966, they all  became the _World Journal Tribune_.  Some weeks later the whole shootin' match, er, folded.)

  He wrote a couple of bestsellers, including _The Old Man and the Boy_ and _The Honey Badger_.  I also recall that he looked a little like Hemingway and spent a lot of time big-game hunting.

  JL

Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Wilson Gray
Subject: Re: whistling in the dark
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Does anyone else remember Robert Ruark? He used the full form of the
phrase in his newspaper column: "as scared as a little nigger
whistling while walking past the graveyard in the dark," IIRC.

-Wilson

On 11/29/06, Alison Murie wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Alison Murie
> Subject: whistling in the dark
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Tom Edsel, on NPR's "On Point"this morning used the phrase "whistling in
> the dark" in a context that strongly suggested that he meant something like
> "building castles in the air" rather than warding off fear of the dark by
> faking insouciance. Has the meaning of this old expression morphed into a
> new sort of Panglossianism?
> AM
> <^>:<^>:<^>:<^>:<^>:<^>:<^>:<
> W is where Worse comes to Worst!
> <^>:<^>:<^>:<^>:<^>:<^>:<^>:<
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> 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 Clemens

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



---------------------------------
Everyone is raving about the all-new Yahoo! Mail beta.

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