"... Hit with _the ugly stick_."

[Jim Parish]

Wilson Gray wrote:
> According to the (apparently) white voice-over guy on random TV
> channels, "South Park gets _hit with the ugly stick_"
>
> I haven't heard the expression, "get hit with the ugly stick," since I
> was about fourteen, ca.1951, e.g., "((S)he look so bad that (s)he
> musta been hit wit' tha ugly stick." Till now, I not only have been
> under the impression that only BE-speakers used this expression, but
> also that it was peculiar to Saint Louis. You never know.

I'd heard the expression by ca. 1980, at which point I had never lived
anywhere near St. Louis. I remember planning (but never executing) a
D& D campaign featuring a race of homely dwarves whose weapon of
preference was the Ugly Stick. (I think I may have first heard it in a Bill
Cosby routine, actually.)

Jim Parish

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