whistling in the dark
Jonathan Lighter
wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM
Wed Nov 29 22:02:07 UTC 2006
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:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Wilson Gray
Subject: Re: whistling in the dark
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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:
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> 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!
> <^>:<^>:<^>:<^>:<^>:<^>:<^>:<
>
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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.
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