"make dirt"

[Rebecca Shapiro]

When I was a child, my grandmother was always telling us that we "shouldn't
make dirt". It wasn't that we not bring "dirt" into the house, or to make a
mess with toys, but it seems like it was more like that schmutz on a larger
scale: leave food around the kitchen, dribble toothpaste around the sink, or
track sand from the beach into the house. It's the "making" that strikes me
as so odd. Does anyone know if that's a translation from Yiddish?

--
Rebecca Shapiro (&*)
201.456.7924

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