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

[Jonathan Lighter]

I believe the only form I've heard is "So, sue me !"

  JL

Fred Shapiro <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Fred Shapiro
Subject: Re: "What part of 'No!' ...?"
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On Wed, 25 Oct 2006, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:

> 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):

The Yale Book of Quotations, which probably got its info from
Barry Popik, has the following:

Well, sue me.
George Jessel, quoted in Boston Globe, 17 Feb. 1929

Fred Shapiro


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Fred R. Shapiro Editor
Associate Librarian for Collections and YALE BOOK OF QUOTATIONS
Access and Lecturer in Legal Research Yale University Press
Yale Law School ISBN 0300107986
e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu http://quotationdictionary.com
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