Richard A. Spears

[Jonathan Lighter]

"Sludge hammer," eh ?

  I have a white friend who, when faced with the possibility of professional disaster, occasionally says, "I'm just waiting for the 500-pound shit hammer to come down." I first heard him say it about 1984.

  I now find thousands of raw Googlits for "shit hammer," of variable specified poundage.

  He's from the South. Blacks live in the South. So "sludge hammer" could have suggested "shit hammer."

  A new folk etymology - with a Google twist !

  JL

Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
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Poster: Wilson Gray
Subject: Re: Richard A. Spears
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I have the abridged, paperbacked, 3rd ed. of Spears. It's possible
that anything that I pick out may well have been covered in the
original, unabridged edition. You never know.

And, of course, I'd be more than amazed, if I came up with anything
that would send The Man (Jon) or any of the other pros back to the
drawing board, to coin a phrase. However, I am flattered that Jon is
pleased to comment on my commentation! You can't beat that with a
sledge (pronounced "sludge" in BE; this can be startling, if you're
not accustomed to hearing people speak of "sludge hammers") hammer, to
coin another phrase.

-Wilson



On 1/4/07, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
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> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Jonathan Lighter
> Subject: Re: Richard A. Spears
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> "Take off like a big-ass[ed] bird" is not uncommon in WWII novels.
>
> "Unass" didn't start appearing in print (AFAIK) until Vietnam.
>
> JL
>
> Wilson Gray wrote:
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> Poster: Wilson Gray
> Subject: Richard A. Spears
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _Slang and Euphemism_
>
> lacks "take off [like a big bird]" = "leave hurriedly." The long form
> I'm familiar with from my Army days. Military jargon, for some reason,
> appears to hold more fossils than civilian slang. Long forms such as
> "shitcan [someone]," "hit the [fart]sack," "be a [shit]heel, a
> dip[shit], a dick[head]," etc. still live, in the barracks.
>
> lacks "un-ass," which I first heard from Korean-War vets before I was
> "in the war," myself.
>
> I'm doing this commentating on Spears just because I can. So, there''s
> no reason to expect anything of use to serious scholars to come out of
> this. It's strictly FWIW and "for fee-U-N," to use a bit of slang left
> over from my mother's girlhood."
>
> -Wilson
> --
> 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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--
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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