"age oneself" = to date oneself

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Mon Apr 21 15:40:21 UTC 2008


At 6:24 AM -0700 4/21/08, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>Yesterday a _Fox & Friends_ anchor made an offhand reference to
>Spuds Mackenzie.  She quickly covered her faux pas by saying, "Oh,
>I'm aging myself!  Many of our viewers never heard of Spuds
>Mackenzie!"
>
>   Too young or too highly educated to remember the late Spuds
>Mackenzie? Go here for your blast of cultural education:
>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7t7qT-R_10&feature=related
>
>   See, "dating myself" makes people think your social life is like
>ugh!  So "aging myself" is more right.
>
Interesting, though, that we get different stress patterns, at least
in default contexts:

"Oh, I'm {DATing/AGing} myself" [= revealing my age]
"Oh, I'm dating mySELF"               [= nobody else is good enough for me]

LH

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