in a position; holy crapsticks

Tue Dec 18 16:15:05 UTC 2007

This does not seem to me to be a "rule" of grammar so much as a function of elementary conversational postulates.

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-----Original Message-----
From: Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>

Date:         Sun, 16 Dec 2007 11:41:03
To:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject:      Re: [ADS-L] in a position; holy crapsticks

"Bad" theoretically subsumes these specific possibilities, but Doug's suggestion could contribute to the phenomenon of deletion.

  To attempt to answer my own question, my guess is "no later than the Reagan Years, with the Carter Years a real possibility."  At least that'[s when I first noticed "We have a situation."

  JL

"Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Douglas G. Wilson"
Subject: Re: in a poistion; holy crapsticks
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>At what point in our history, I wonder, did the cultural expectation
>that any circumstance is most likely to be bad become entrenched in
>our very grammar?

Perhaps what is deleted is not "bad" but something else (which has
some reason to be deleted)? Maybe "shitty", or "f*cked-up", or ....

Hard to tell ... since it's been, uh, redacted. (^_^)

-- Doug Wilson

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