Heard on Futurama: semantic drift?

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Thu Aug 7 01:39:14 UTC 2008


Robot BE-speaker:

"I ain't down with this 'Kwanzaa' _tip_ [there being only a single
Kwanzaa gift, a booklet entitled, "What Is Kwanzaa?"]!"


Presumably, "'Kwanzaa' _tip_ means "'Kwanzaa' bullshit" or some such.

In 'Sixties Los Angeles,

"That ain't nothin' but a _bullshit tip_"

was a common expression meaning something like, "That's a dumb idea";
"You actually went for that okey-doke?!" etc. It appears that _tip_
alone has taken over the meaning of _bullshit tip_.

-Wilson
 --
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.
-----
 -Sam'l Clemens

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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