Fwd: "... enough for government work"

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

meant this for the whole list...

Begin forwarded message:

> From: "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu>
> Date: June 10, 2008 12:30:12 PM PDT
> To: alphatwin2002 at yahoo.com
> Subject: Re: "... enough for government work"
>
>
> On Jun 10, 2008, at 12:16 PM, Brenda Lester wrote:
>
>> CLOSE enough for government work.
>
> both variants are found.  and, in fact, Bonnie's 1962 cite was for
> "good" and Ben's was for "close".  you might prefer "close", but
> others clearly prefer "good".  and even if we find that one of the
> variants came first, that doesn't mean that that variant is the
> "true" version.
>
> arnold
>

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