Query: "gone to Hobbes"

[Wilson Gray]

I'm with you, Jon. That's my WAG, too.

-Wilson

On 10/7/07, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Query: "gone to Hobbes"
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>
> Suggested by "hotter [or harder] than the hobs of hell"?
>
>   JL
>
> "Cohen, Gerald Leonard" <gcohen at UMR.EDU> wrote:
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> 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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--
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.
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                                              -Sam'l Clemens

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