Idiom "sweat bullets"-----influence of German?

[Jonathan Lighter]

Sorry, Ben, re 1929 "sweating bullets."  It seems I often relpy either  too soon or too late.

  JL

Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Benjamin Zimmer
Subject: Re: Idiom "sweat bullets"-----influence of German?
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On 9/2/06, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:
>
> >A NewspaperArchive cite from 1936 is available. So that takes out the
> >probability of a US soldier from WWII.
>
> And the way it was used in 1936 was the same as the modern way, without
> explanation or quotation marks, suggesting that it was already widely
> recognizable.

"Sweating bullets" is also listed, without a gloss, in:

"Proverbs and Proverbial Expressions Current in the United States East
of the Missouri and North of the Ohio Rivers" by Margaret Hardie
_American Speech_ Vol. 4, No. 6 (Aug. 1929), p. 471


--Ben Zimmer

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