singular "small fry"

[Wilson Gray]

Engelhardt's phrase sounds fully grammatical, as well as perfectly
clear and reasonable, to me. What should he have written, "He was just
small fry" or what? Is he perhaps a BE speaker? Or some kind of alien?

-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.
-----
-Mark Twain



On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 11:52 AM, Alison Murie <sagehen7470 at att.net> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Alison Murie <sagehen7470 at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      singular "small  fry"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Tom Engelhardt, writing about the collapse of the book market, says,
> of one of its victims, "He was just a small fry"....... While this is
> perfectly clear & reasonable, to me, "small fry" is an invariable mass
> noun, like "scampi."
> AM
>
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