Soonest = as soon as

[Wilson Gray]

No, James. Only that, though he had a Spanish name, he was of a
phenotype - hair type, skin tone, nose-shape, lip-shape, etc. - that
was distinct from that of any random African-American Anglo, and spoke
African-American English, but with a Spanish accent, whose phonetics I
felt no need to try to represent.

I agree with your suggestion that the speaker may very well have been
reaching for "escalated." I should have thought of that, myself. It's
obvious, now that you've pointed  it out. :-)

-Wilson

On 8/21/07, Landau, James <James.Landau at ngc.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Landau, James" <James.Landau at NGC.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Soonest = as soon as
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Ben Zimmer quotes the OED:
>
> <quote>
> soon, adv.
>  III. In the superlative form soonest.
>     14. a. Most quickly, readily, etc. Now freq. (orig. telegraphese),
> as soon as possible.
> [...]
> 1962 J. HAY in E. Queen's 16th Mystery Annual 163 'Bjornsson and whale
> to proceed soonest to Regensburg and await further orders,' Twentypenny
> cabled Hawker.=20
> <quote>
>
> I read that story, not in the Annual but in Ellery Queen's Mystery
> Magazine before it was reprinted in the annual.  That means it may have
> appeared in the magazine in 1960 or 1961.  In case you're interested, it
> was either a preposterous spy story or a dead-pan spy-story spoof, and
> was such a bad story that it stuck in my mind.  The plot had a man who
> used the alias "Colonel Twentypenny" who was ordered to get a rocket
> scientist and a sample of his rocket fuel out of Czechoslovakia, so he
> acquired a refrigerated whale carcass and took it into Czechoslovakia as
> a cultural exchange exhibit, loaded the scientist and several TONS of
> his rocket fuel into the carcass, turned off the refrigeration, and
> waited for the Czechs to boot the exhibit and its odor out of the
> country, of course without bothering to inspect it.  Two other (useless)
> quotes from that story, both from memory so they may not be exact: "It
> doesn't matter if you call yourself MI Five and a Half" and "Like the
> American pork packers who use all of the pig except the squeal, British
> whalers use all of the whale except the spout."
>
> OT:  If anyone wants, I have a cite of "prepone" from 1978 written by
> someone who lived in Rhode Island and probably was a native of the US.
>
> Wilson Gray wrote:
> <quote>
> Case A: Male African-American Latino speaker from Buffalo:
>
> "And, from there, it _especulated_ into a confrontation."
>
> I assume that the speaker had what a German friend of mine used to call
> "a schwer English wort" handy and that, unconcerned with meaning, he
> just tossed it into his testimony in an effort to impress the judge with
> his erudition.
> </quote>
>
> There is also the possibility that the speaker simply meant to say
> "escalated".
>
> I find it odd to see a person referred to as "African-American Latino".
> Are you implying that he speaks AAVTM (African-American Vernacular
> Tex-Mex)?
>
> James A. Landau
> test engineer
> Northrop-Grumman Information Technology
> 8025 Black Horse Pike, Suite 300
> West Atlantic City NJ 08232 USA=20
>
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>
>
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--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
                                              -Sam'l Clemens

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