Gold Tooth Guy

Arnold M. Zwicky zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU
Mon Oct 1 13:35:48 UTC 2007


On Sep 30, 2007, at 7:14 PM, Mark Mandel wrote:

> This googit looks like a genuine eggcorn, or at least a mondegreen (
> http://www.alwayslyrics.com/result.php/97128).This site has song
> lyrics as
> transcribed by whoever puts them up, and this transcriber's
> spelling and
> punctuation are already pretty bad.
>
>   my gold tooth guy i could depend on you,only people out to get me
> were
> friends like you,

it took me a while to figure out that the model was "go-to guy".
does Haystak actually say "gold tooth guy", or was this a mishearing?

> This other one is unclear (
> http://datinginbrooklyn.blogspot.com/2006_05_01_archive.html):
>
>   Then, yesterday afternoon, back in NY, I had a very interesting
> conversation with my co-worker (gold tooth guy)

also, at http://girlfawkes1.blogspot.com/ for 9/28/07:

I came across a new saying a couple of days ago. I was walking behind
two guys on Ludlow Ave, and I was shamelessly eavesdropping on their
conversation. One guy was talking about how he used to be the best
football player on his high school team. He was saying how he would
do anything for the team and the team really counted on him to do
whatever they needed. Then he said something that truly perplexed me.
He said, "Man, I was the Gold Tooth Guy." What? What on earth could
this possibly mean? He clearly said Gold Tooth Guy. His friend just
nodded in recognition,so he must have known what it meant. Then I
realized that this man meant that he was the Go To Guy on the team.
[followed by query about the correct linguistic term, and a
discussion of what "go-to guy" means]

....

otherwise, the hits seem to be about guys who are picked out by their
having a gold tooth/gold teeth.

arnold

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