X to Y: Recency illusion?

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 1:59 PM, Arnold M. Zwicky
<zwicky at csli.stanford.edu> wrote:
>
> my point about clippings could have been made just from "X is", where
> X is a "thingy noun".  i have a file with examples of this sort with:
> fact, point, problem, thing, trouble, truth.  plus "chances are".  the
> OED has relevant examples of "the thing is" back to 1873 (Matthew
> Arnold), but none for the truncated version.

It's awfully hard to search on this pattern without case sensitivity,
but here are two examples for sentence-initial "thing is" from
mid-20th century American short stories:

-----
1947 Richard Sturgeon, "Maturity" in _Astounding Science Fiction_ 28
Thing is, I have found myself a little worried from time to time.
About myself.
http://books.google.com/books?id=F_oDAAAAYAAJ
-----
c1952 Richard Yates, "No Pain Whatsoever" in _The Collected Stories of
Richard Yates_ (2002) 53 Thing is, I've still got to get over this
_last_ one.
http://books.google.com/books?id=lbjwuziGY0UC
-----

It's much easier to find examples preceded by an adjective --
"first/next thing is...", "odd/strange thing is", etc. The first
example below seems particularly telegraphic (it's a journal entry
where "the" is deleted elsewhere), but the later ones seem merely to
be emphatic or colloquial:

-----
1895 _Punch_ (2 Mar.) 107
Odd thing is that in series of divisions Government had nearest squeak
on motion for the Closure.
http://books.google.com/books?id=EP8CAAAAIAAJ
-----
1903 Ernest Thompson Seton, _Two Little Savages_ 220
First thing is to secure the prisoner, Yan.
http://books.google.com/books?id=T4E3AAAAIAAJ
-----
1915 Joseph Crosby Lincoln, _Thankful's Inheritance_ 15
Next thing is to get aboard.
http://books.google.com/books?id=w14RAAAAYAAJ
-----
1922 Eugene O'Neill, _Anna Christie_ (Act III)
First thing is, I want to tell you two guys something.
http://www.eoneill.com/texts/ac/iii.htm
-----
1926 G.K. Chesterton, "The Return of Don Quixote"
"Odd thing is," said Archer in his confidential, emphatic style to the
young squire who carried the sword, "Odd thing is he can't _see_ he's
out of it."
http://books.google.com/books?id=_qsELvLSPBMC
-----

--Ben Zimmer

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