Skin In The Gane

[Benjamin Zimmer]

Sorry, here's a link that doesn't require TimesSelect access:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/magazine/17wwln_safire.html?ei=5090&en=97be92b89aa8baa7&ex=1316145600&adxnnl=1&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1158491211-kZz5B+we6jC05MU5Z1FFEA


On 4/15/07, Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
> Safire investigated "skin in the game" in an On Language column last year:
>
> http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F40C12FE3E550C748DDDA00894DE404482
>
>
>
> On 4/15/07, Doug Harris <cats22 at frontiernet.net> wrote:
> >
> > From today's LA Times, in an article re the shrinking number of people
> > paying US income tax:
> >
> > "Many people would think if you are a citizen, you ought to have skin in the
> > game, and we have more and more people with no skin in the game," said Scott
> > Hodge, president of the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan, conservative-leaning
> > research group. "From a social perspective, we ought to be concerned about
> > that."
> >
> > I am not really interested in sports, and I make no attempt to keep current
> > on sports terms or clichés. But I have noticed with some alarm (!) a
> > creeping increase, over the past couple of decades, in the number of sports
> > terms, FAR too often unexplained, or self-evident, sneaking into 'general
> > speak' -- the way most of us speak most of the time. 'Hat trick,' a term
> > borrowed by hockey from soccer (where it actually _has_ a meaning), is a
> > good example. 'Skin in the game' could be another.
> > I certainly hope not. Hat trick sounds like something fun. Skin in the game
> > smacks of violence, to one's own body or someone else's. Perhaps sports
> > speak inventors' creed should, like doctors, include the concept 'do no
> > harm'.
> > (the other) doug
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>

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