An army or a dozen

[Joel S. Berson]

At 2/7/2008 04:13 AM, LanDi Liu wrote:
>Oh!  Just as I sent that, I remembered a construction like that (which I
>guess was sitting in the back of my brain making me feel that this wasn't an
>isolated example)!  It's from Lenny Kravitz's "Fly Away" (1998): "the Milky
>Way, or even Mars".  Others?

For God, for country, and for Yale.

I take
>"The Lion declared he was afraid of nothing on earth, and would gladly face
>an army or a dozen of the fierce Kalidahs."
to be intended as humorous, as are several other expressions like the
"Yale" one that are on the tip of my brain but not emerging, which
end with something like "or even X", where X is smaller than the
thing(s) that have preceded it.  My subconscious tells me to think of
comic strips -- Pogo?

Joel

Joel


>On Feb 7, 2008 5:03 PM, LanDi Liu <strangeguitars at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       LanDi Liu <strangeguitars at GMAIL.COM>
> > Subject:      An army or a dozen
> >
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > From The Wizard of Oz:
> > "The Lion declared he was afraid of nothing on earth, and would gladly
> > face
> > an army or a dozen of the fierce Kalidahs."*
> >
> > In the above sentence, would you read this to be 'an army of the Kalidahs,
> > or a dozen of the Kalidahs', or 'an army of men, or a dozen of the fierce
> > Kalidahs."?
> >
> > I think it's very unnatural to put the greater before the lesser in this
> > kind of a context.  But it may be that the Kalidahs were being thought of
> > here as being even more powerful than an army.  Does anyone here have (or
> > can think of) any examples of putting the greater before the lesser?  Or
> > does anyone think it is (or once was) normal to do this?
> >
> > *Kalidahs are huge animals with bodies like bears and heads like tigers.
> >
> > --
> > Randy Alexander
> > Jilin City, China
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
>
>
>--
>Randy Alexander
>Jilin City, China
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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