Query: "gone to Hobbes"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Suggested by "hotter [or harder] than the hobs of hell"?

  JL

"Cohen, Gerald Leonard" <gcohen at UMR.EDU> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Cohen, Gerald Leonard"
Subject: Query: "gone to Hobbes"
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Today I was told that a 90 year old lady had matter-of-factly said that the crops this year "have just gone to Hobbes" (roughly = simply went to hell in a handbasket). The younger lady to whom she said this then asked her about the expression, and the older lady answered that her mother had often used it.

I don't have OED or DARE handy, but I see the expression doesn't appear in the ads-l archives or HDAS. Is anyone here familiar with it and would anyone have any idea who Hobbes in the expression is?

Gerald Cohen
South-Central Missouri

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