verbing in the Stanford Chaparral

[Michael H Covarrubias]

My guess would be that Ms McCurdy remembers the line from Hamlet's soliloquy in
I.ii: "Fie on't, ah fie!"

Reading 'on' as a preposition there it would make sense to think that Hamlet is
uttering some sort of an imperative. Even if misguided it's an understandable
reading no?

In fact I force myself into some odd positions trying to read "on't" as "about
it" or "in regards to that" as would be necessary if reading "fie" as a cry of
disgust in that line.

Michael

Quoting "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>:
>
> (the Stanford Chaparral is the student humor magazine)
>
> from vol. CVIII no. 3, p. 8, "A Gentleman's Club" (by Meghan
> McCurdy), the verbing of an interjection:
>
> [about a place called A Gentleman's Club]  It pains me even now to
> take it down, but rest assured that in the low grunts of lesser
> humanity I found no conversation worth having, no music worth
> listening to, and in the unnecessary and gratuitous display of base
> and vile flesh no companionship worth pursuing.  I fie upon it.
>
> [the OED takes "fie" back to a sound of disgust]
>

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   English Language & Linguistics
   Purdue University
   mcovarru at purdue.edu

   web.ics.purdue.edu/~mcovarru
  <http://wishydig.blogspot.com>

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