WOW WOTW: 'Monte-Shark Pattern' (Ok, it's not _A_ word!)

[Jonathan Lighter]

Oh! I get it now! "Monte-shark _patter_"!

  At first I thought it was some kind of sports-shirt print. You know, with little pictures of three-card artists?

  To quote Judy Tenuta, "It could happen."

  JL

Doug Harris <cats22 at FRONTIERNET.NET> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Doug Harris
Subject: WOW WOTW: 'Monte-Shark Pattern' (Ok, it's not _A_ word!)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It's not often, in my experience, that you can count, on a single
page, the _authentic_ hits from the count Google offers up on a
particular word or phrase.
"Monte-shark pattern" offers such an opportunity.
I spotted it in a book review offered to me by Powell's. Turns
out, exactly the same review -- thus a second Google hit -- was
distributed by the NY Review of Books.
Those two hits represent 50% of the legitimate ones reported by
Google just now.
A total of FOUR _real_ HITS (of seven Google reported.
And it's a cool (neat? george?) phrase, too -- one whose meaning
could be stretched to include the patter of most any kind of fast-
talking street or flea market vendor.
dh

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



---------------------------------
Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile.  Try it now.

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