"kink in your armor"

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Tue Oct 10 17:27:31 UTC 2006


I certainly *hope* that the claim was made facetiously! Otherwise,
what I see here in "kink" is a slur against the kind of bad hair
(stereo)typical of African-Americans! ;-)

-Wilson

On 10/10/06, 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:      "kink in your armor"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Maybe this has been mentioned before.
>
>   An attorney on Court TV has described a defendant as having a "kink in his armor."
>
>   A Google search revels over 100 raw hits (really not that many) for "kink in his/ your
>   armo(u)r."
>
>   Now it may be purely coincidental, but I can recall the claim (made in the 1970's and perhaps facetiously - at first) that a "chink in one's armor" was a racially offensive phrase, along with "The jig is up."
>
>   Some exx. of "kink in one's armor" may reflect this belief, others simply a (childhood ?) mishearing of "chink."
>
>   JL
>
>
>
>
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--
Everybody says, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange
complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is knows how deep
a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our
race. He brought death into the world.

--Sam Clemens

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