"kippie" - Buster Keaton
Douglas G. Wilson
douglas at NB.NET
Sat Jan 13 03:49:21 UTC 2007
>"It got so that I didn't care if school kept or not."
This is an old expression (from 1855 at a glance at N'archive): "not care
whether school keeps or not" means "not care about anything at all".
"School keeps" = "school continues"/"school remains in session". This is
the opposite of "school lets out", I think.
Presumably every school child was imagined to be intensely interested in
when/whether school would let out, so not to care about this was considered
the extreme of apathy ... at least that's how I imagine it.
There is also "whether school keeps or not" = "no matter what happens".
Lots of examples can be Googled.
-- Doug Wilson
--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.410 / Virus Database: 268.16.10/624 - Release Date: 1/12/2007
------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
More information about the Ads-l
mailing list