"look the jack of diamonds in the eye", and "bigger than Dallas"

[william salmon]

BTW, where'bouts in Texas are you from? Me and Charlie are from East Texas.

[ws]

Ah. Always nice to meet fellow Texans---I'm from Corpus Christi. The first
time I can remember hearing 'bigger than Dallas' was there from a neighbor,
who accused me after some tall tale of "lying bigger than Dallas".





-Wilson

On 10/16/06, william salmon <william.salmon at yale.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
-----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       william salmon <william.salmon at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      "look the jack of diamonds in the eye",  and "bigger than
Dallas"
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---
>
> Wondering about origins of these two expressions.  Google doesn't do too
> well with the first.
>
> As for 'bigger than Dallas', I heard this often growing up in Texas, but I
> come across it from time to time in non-Texas contexts as well. For
example,
> in Seth Morgan's San Francisco prison novel *Homeboy*, 'bigger than
Dallas'
> is used frequently by non-Texan characters. I don't think Morgan himself
was
> from Texas either.
>
> WS
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


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

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