Out of Pocket

[Laurence Horn]

At 1:52 PM -0400 10/24/08, David Metevia wrote:
>I usually associate this phrase with expenses, specifically health care
>expenses not covered by insurance.  However, I hear both work colleagues
>and friends & family use the term to describe people who are unavailable
>(under the weather, out sick, or just incommunicado).  This sounds
>strange to me.
>
--to me too. I only know the 'not covered by insurance' sense.   But
this reminds me of a semantically related expression I had meant to
ask about.  In two different series, detectives working for the LAPD
refer to those people--suspects, witnesses, potential victims,
whatever--who have intentionally made themselves hard to find (not
necessarily on the lam) as being "in the wind" (in Michael Connelly
novels) or "in the air" (in Jonathan Kellerman novels).  "Rabbiting"
is also used for this activity, which I think I've seen elsewhere,
but I only know "in the wind/air" from these two sources.  Is this
general to LA, California, or detectives?  Is there an isogloss that
cuts through the LAPD detective squad distinguishing the two
expressions, or are they in free idiosyncratic variation?  Inquiring
minds--well, this one, anyway--want to know.

LH

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