Heard on The Judges: "ripping and running"

[Marc Velasco]

Wilson, please translate.

I've only heard the _rip and run_ in the context of The Wire, and there it
was basically referring to stick-up jobs.

What she mean?




On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 9:36 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Heard on The Judges: "ripping and running"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Spoken by a Latin-American African-American woman [Sheila Gonzalez]
> from Buffalo, NY, speaking of bad son:
>
> "He was fifteen! I couldn't _rip an' run_ behin' him!"
>
>
> I've never heard this phrase used in any form except "rippin(g) and
> runnin(g)" before. I would have expected, "I couldn't *be* _rippin'
> an' runnin'_ behind him!"
>
> -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.
> -----
>  -Sam'l Clemens
>
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