"you pays your money"

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Aug 15, 2007, at 10:22 AM, Scot LaFaive wrote:

> While watching a Twilight Zone episode today I was struck by Rod
> Serling's
> use of an ungrammatical form: "you pays your money, you takes your
> chances."
> I thought this seemed out of the ordinary for him, so to Google I
> went.
> Interestingly enough, this appears to be idiom of some usage. This
> person
> claims to have an 1846 citation for it
> (http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/37/messages/256.html).

there are a number of these proverbs in folksy form that are deployed
jocularly.  i happen to have stumbled on some others recently, with
"them" or "them's/thems" as 3pl subjects (sometimes taking pl verbs,
often taking the leveled sg forms, as in "you pays your money"):

   them's the breaks
   them's (is) fightin' words [many, many variants]
   them's as can't, teach [several variants]
   them's as has, gets [several variants]

arnold

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