"bottle in front of me" (close, but no cigar)

[Laurence Horn]

At 6:04 PM -0400 10/7/08, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 5:54 PM, George Thompson
><george.thompson at nyu.edu> wrote:
>>
>>  Here is the idea of the champagne/sham pain quibble, but they
>>somehow piss it:
>>
>>         A good natured looking little black fellow named Charles Odell, with
>his
>>  hair braided into as many tails as a Bashaw. . . .  [a clerk; is
>>arrested for
>>  stealing a bottle of champagne from his boss, and so suffers] the
>>real pain of
>>  imprisonment.  New-York Daily Advertiser, November 18, 1834, p. 2, col. 3
>
>>>From the same year, under the heading "Volunteer Toasts":
>
>1834 _Hagers-Town (Md.) Free Press_ 9 July 2/6 Champaigne to our real friends,
>and real pain to our sham friends.
>
>
>--Ben Zimmer
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

Of course, I meant *at least* a couple of decades...

LH

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