Heard on "Today on NBC"

[Jonathan Lighter]

IIRC, to _lay dead_ has long had an AAVE sense of "to lie low." I associate it with the '60s or early '70s. If it isn't in HDAS, it's because I didn't think it was slangy enough.

  Or else because I don't RC.

  JL

Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Wilson Gray
Subject: Heard on "Today on NBC"
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Matt is questioning Magic Johnson on the amount of medicine that the
latter takes daily to control his HIV. Magic answers that he now takes
only two medicines a day "because the virus is _layin' dead_ in [his]
body."

Clearly, Magic means that the virus is _lying dormant_ in his body.
However, this caught my attention because, in the 'Forties and
'Fifties in Saint Louis, we used "lay dead" to mean, "laze around the
house doing nothing in particular."

It may be a bit macabre, but I gotta tell y'all, the mental picture of
HIV just lazin' around in Magic's bod doin' nothin' in p'ticluh cracks
me up.

-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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