Heard in Missouri: "but good!"

[Jonathan Lighter]

But he hurt 'im bad.

  JL

Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Laurence Horn
Subject: Re: Heard in Missouri: "but good!"
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At 6:08 PM -0800 12/19/07, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>OED has David Crockett killing a bear "good" in 1834 (_good_, ...adv. B.).
>
> JL

And we have independent evidence that he also kilt him a b'ar when he
was only three, which would have been in 1789 or thenabouts. But the
historical record doesn't show whether or not he kilt that one good.

LH

>
>
>"Arnold M. Zwicky" wrote:
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>-----------------------
>Sender: American Dialect Society
>Poster: "Arnold M. Zwicky"
>Subject: Re: Heard in Missouri: "but good!"
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>On Dec 19, 2007, at 3:33 PM, David Donnell wrote:
>
>> Pardon my asking: by "opaque idiom" what do you mean?
>
>all idoms are to some extend semantically opaque. these ("but good",
>"and how") are especially so: knowing the meanings of the words
>wouldn't help you at all in figuring out their meaning/use.
>
>> I reckon you mean there is no literal sense to either idiom... (If
>> so, I agree with you. Otherwise, please correct me.)
>
>yup.
>
>> Also, below you say it's "general american. colloquial, but
>> widespread."
>>
>> Don't you find the expression a wee bit anachronistic? I mean, can
>> you imagine any young adult using it nowdays? Just curious.
>
>you might be right; this is something someone could look at. but
>there seems to be (or have been) nothing particularly regional about it.
>
>> Note: I don't have enough info to circumscribe usage of the
>> expression--didn't mean to suggest it is regional. I simply reported
>> the identity & location of the person using the expression. (My dear
>> old ma.)
>
>i realize that this cuts both ways. if you don't give the details, we
>don't know how to situate the report. but whatever details you give,
>we'll take to be possibly relevant to the report.
>
>i picked up on the possibly regional part, because others did. my
>apologies.
>
>arnold
>
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