gives good camera

[Joel S. Berson]

It does make me wonder, but then again I'm over 40.

Joel

At 7/27/2008 11:12 PM, James Harbeck wrote:
>>Is it only the elderly who find this idiom (see HDAS s.v. "give") just a we=
>>e bit unseemly for daytime TV?
>
>I can recall seeing "give good meeting" and "give
>good lunch" back in the '80s; they were, of
>course, playing on "head," but this turn of
>phrase (give good X) seems by now to have been
>around long enough that it's getting tame and may
>even no longer have the resonances it first had
>-- sort of like how "jerk" (to describe an
>unpleasant person) for many people doesn't seem
>to be a masturbation reference now. I confess if
>I were to hear "He gives good camera" from, say,
>a news anchor, it might make me snarf my beverage
>at first, but I can't say it would seem
>unutterably outré to me (of course, I'm only 40).
>
>James Harbeck.
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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