till

[Wilson Gray]

Bill suggests that "Perhaps this line followed the one quoted by
Wilson??" Or perhaps the line that Bill quotes preceded the one that I
quoted. I'm easy WRT this point. The rap makes sense, either way.

What's interesting to me is that "pitch a bitch" was new to Bill, at
least at the time that he heard the CD (or was it the LP?). Spears
dates the phrase only to "late 1900's" and doesn't specify U.S. black
use. I've been familiar with this phrase since about 1950. The LP
dates to no later than 1973.

-Wilson



On 7/23/07, Mullins, Bill AMRDEC <Bill.Mullins at us.army.mil> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Mullins, Bill AMRDEC" <Bill.Mullins at US.ARMY.MIL>
> Subject:      Re: till
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> >I should point out that "half pas(t)" occurred only in this locution
> >and not in ordinary speech. To quote Richard Pryor:
> >
> >Q. "What y'all waitin' for?"
> >A. "'Leven-thirty. Don't nothin' start happenin' till eleven-thirty."
>
> As I recall it, the answer is "Leven-thirty.  We gonna pitch a bitch at ele=
> ven-thirty."
> (Perhaps this line followed the one quoted by Wilson??)
>
> This was the first time I ever heard "pitch a bitch", a phrase which has se=
> rved me well over the intervening years.
>
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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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