bootleg recessionistas

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Sun, Oct 26, 2008 at 9:43 PM, Alice Faber <faber at haskins.yale.edu> wrote:
>
> Laurence Horn wrote:
>> OK, "bootleg" isn't new, and I even have some Bootleg Dylan on my
>> iTunes, but is anyone familiar with it in this apparently bleached or
>> shifted sense as used by Matt Stairs below?
>>
>> "It's disappointing and some guys were extremely mad about it,"
>> Stairs said early Friday evening after the team's workout at Citizens
>> Bank Park. "I think it's bootleg when you have the World Series and
>> guys are jogging out to the line and they don't take the extra five
>> minutes to introduce the players."
>
> Could it be a Canadianism?
>
> Alternatively, a malapropism (for bush-league)?

Fits this Double-Tongued definition pretty well ("inferior,
unappealing, worthless" -- cites from 2001):

http://www.doubletongued.org/index.php/dictionary/bootleg/


--Ben Zimmer

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