Heard in Missouri: "but good!"

[Jonathan Lighter]

"_Knowed_ every tree."

  JL

"Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Joel S. Berson"
Subject: Re: Heard in Missouri: "but good!"
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In this context (and in general), doesn't the antecedent "he" in
"Raised in the woods so's he knew ev'ry tree" override any
presumption that the next "he" refers to its immediately preceding
noun, "b'ar"? And when I was learning to write, I think I was told
not to change the referent of a pronoun unless (until) the meaning
would be absolutely clear.

(Also, for this specific context, as Laurence Horn wrote, the "only
three" would not be exceptional unless it meant Davy.)

Joel


At 12/20/2007 10:07 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>At 9:48 PM -0500 12/20/07, Doug Harris wrote:
>>It's highly unlikely the bear -- or b'ar -- would agree with that
>>description of his/her demise.
>>(And "when he was only three" seems, grammatically, to be referring
>>to the critter, not the critter-conquerer. That seems more likely
>>than the song writer's version, unless disbelief isn't simply
>>suspended, but cast, in toto, aside.
>
>I'm afraid it's the latter--we're talking Walt Disney, after all.
>It's far easier to suspend disbelief in precisely this way,
>especially when the whole point is tellin' tall tales about Davy C.
>and his exploits, than to interpret the antecedent of "*he*" in
>
>Born on a mountaintop in Tennessee,
>Greenest state in the land of the free,
>Raised in the woods so's he knew ev'ry tree,
>Kilt him a bar when *he* was only three.
>Davy, Davy Crockett,
>King of the wild frontier.
>
>Besides which, if Davy's b'ar were being specified as "only three",
>that would imply this wasn't such an all-fired great deed as killin'
>a grown-up b'ar would have been.
>
>LH
>
>
>>(the other) doug
>>-------------------
>>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
>>
>>>
>>>-------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>>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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