Skin In The Gane> jump

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:12 AM -0700 4/16/07, FRITZ JUENGLING wrote:
>For quite a while I have wanted to ask the list about this phrase "jump
>the shark."  Now would be a good time, I guess.  I had never heard it
>until about 3 years ago. I asked one of my classes about it and was
>shocked to learn that most of them knew it.  Again, it seems that I was
>the last person in the Free World to learn a bit of pop culture. I do
>remember when Happy Days ran that episode about 30 years ago, but had no
>idea of the phrase.  So, my question is "how many of you know this
>before we just started talking about it on this list in the last day or
>so?"

I was, through some other discussion on the web several years ago.

>BTW, the phrase has now been shortened to 'jumped,' as in 'The Stones
>jumped after their Tatoo You album' or 'Sledge Hammer jumped after the
>first season.'  It is not limited to TV shows, but can be applied to
>just about anything.
>Fritz J
>
I hadn't encountered "jump" used absolutely in this sense but I would
probably have figured out the reference with enough context, e.g. in
the second of your two examples above; the first of them would have
probably stumped me, and not only because I prefer "Voodoo Lounge"
(1994) and the first half of "Bridges to Babylon" (1997) to "Tattoo
You" (1981), even though arguably it's all been downhill since "Exile
on Main St." (1972).

LH

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