strum up support

[Wilson Gray]

FWIW, this is the first time that I've ever come across "strum up" for
"drum up." With any luck, I'll never run across it, again. "Ha! I
should live so long," to coin a phrase.

-Wilson

On 6/13/07, Arnold M. Zwicky <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject:      strum up support
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> i caught this one in the 5/27/07 NYT Magazine, p. 32, in Jon
> Mooallem's "The Unintended Consequences of Rehydration":
>
> The morning I visited, he had unearthed 300 copies of letters
> Chambers sent, often while overseas for business, to strum up support
> for the bottle bill.
> www.nytimes.com/2007/05/27/magazine/27Bottle-t.html?
> pagewanted=3&incamp=article_popular
>
> the idiom i know is "drum up", not "strum up", and OED, NOAD2, and
> AHD4 agree with me (entries for "drum up", no corresponding sense for
> "strum").
>
> 48 google webhits ("similar" entries removed) for "strum up
> support".  many have some association with music-making (the Mummers,
> for example), but some do not, e.g.:
>
> LaMont says it wasn't easy to strum up support, as people often do
> not consider film an art form and, therefore, do not think of
> donating to this industry. ...
> www.contact-mag.com/issue3/theater.htm
>
> There's no better way to strum up support in New England than take a
> shot at the Yankees—a marketing method that has proven golden for
> short-season Lowell ...
> www.baseballamerica.com/blog/business/
>
> ... they actually apply to women, rather, they use it as a political
> chess piece to strum up support for their causes and abandon us when
> the need arises. ...
> bitingbeaver.blogspot.com/2005/11/scalito-and-future-of-roe.html
>
> They strum up support for their projects by concocting some
> unrelated, bizarre relationship between a group's opposition and some
> other irrelevant issue. ...
> thepeach.blogspot.com/2005_02_27_archive.html
>
> It is only Beth Twitty saying that to strum up support. I have not
> seen any official document saying this. More of the same. Beth wants
> the world to believe ...
> www.scaredmonkeys.com/2005/09/ 25/joran-van-der-sloot-denies-
> responsibility/
>
> -----
>
> something eggcornesque.
>
> arnold
>
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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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