"What part of 'No!' ...?"

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Oct 25, 2006, at 1:39 PM, Jon Lighter wrote:

> The webpage Larry cites erroneously mentions "So sue me!" as a
> phrase that emerged in the '80s or '90s.
>
>   I've been using it since at least the mid-'60s.  I probably
> picked it up from TV. It's widely known in NYC.

from:
   http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/so-sue-me.html

-----
The earliest reference I can find is from the song 'Sue Me, Sue Me',
in the musical 'Guys and Dolls'. This was a Broadway show in 1950 and
released as a film in 1955. This was composed by Frank Loesser and
sung in the film version by Frank Sinatra (as Nathan Detroit) and
Vivian Blaine (as Miss Adelaide):

  Detroit: Serve a paper and sue me, sue me, what can you do me? I
love you. Give a holler and hate me, hate me, go ahead, hate me. I
love you.

   Adelaide: When you wind up in jail, don't come to me to bail you out.

   Detroit: Allright already, so call a policeman. Allright already,
it's true, you knew, so sue me, sue me, what can you do me. I love you.

In the original stage version the line 'you knew' was given as 'so
nu'. Nu is a Yiddish word meaning (depending on who you ask)
something like 'what did you expect?'. This gives some weight to the
suggestion that several American correspondents of mine have made -
that the phrase is Yiddish and was in common use by Jewish men in New
York prior to 1950.
------

Sam Levene and Vivian Blaine in the original stage production (which
i saw on broadway in 1951).

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)

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