sooner and later

[Scot LaFaive]

> Yesterday on an Atlanta TV station, Bobby Patrino--coach of the Atlanta Falcons--declared that his beleaguered team will resume its winning ways, but "we need it sooner than later." When he said it, orally, it ALMOST sounded right!
It sounds very right to me.
 
Scot



> Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2007 10:53:38 -0400> From: cdoyle at UGA.EDU> Subject: sooner and later> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------> Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>> Poster: Charles Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU>> Subject: sooner and later> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------> > Early this week we discussed the strange-looking sentence "We want our cake and eat it too." ArnoldZ suggested that it's "maybe a telescoping of 'want to have our cake and eat it too'" (and he quoted a sentence beginning "If you are interested in buying or selling and save lots of money . . ."). I suspect that proverbial expressions and other "fixed" phrasings are especially prone to such aberrations when they are worked into larger syntactic constructions.> > Yesterday on an Atlanta TV station, Bobby Patrino--coach of the Atlanta Falcons--declared that his beleaguered team will resume its winning ways, but "we need it sooner than later." When he said it, orally, it ALMOST sounded right!> > --Charlie> _____________________________________________________________> > ------------------------------------------------------------> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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