push comes to shove (1940)

[Wilson Gray]

Almost from the very moment that I decided to participate in ADS-L,
I've been trying to come up with the correct title of a lexicon,
dictionary, whatever, with a title vaguely along the lines of
_Speech/Language
/Words/whatever of the Southern/Southeastern/whatever Alabama
Colored/Negro/Negroes, whatever_, originally published in the 19th C..
I've thought that, surely, someone here would have referenced it, over
the years. But, no one has. Does this title ring a bell with anyone?
If I really put in serious effort, I'm positive that I can locate this
publication, since it's part of a reprint series that I'm sure that I
can locate somewhere in Widener Library. That's where I found the book
in the first place, about 25 years ago. What's really interesting
about this work is that it lists many sE locutions, "when push comes
to shove," being one among many, that the book's compiler specifies as
being peculiar to SE AL BE.

-Wilson


On Wed, Sep 3, 2008 at 3:37 PM, Benjamin Zimmer
<bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      push comes to shove (1940)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> The latest OED draft revision has 1948 for "push comes to shove". Here
> it is in a 1940 article entitled "Lace Up Your Boots And Dig This
> Jive!" about jitterbugs at the Golden Gate Ballroom.
>
> 1940 _New York Amsterdam News_ 2 Mar. 21/4 If push comes to shove,
> they'll start leaping in a candy store whenever there is a music box
> around.
>
>
> --Ben Zimmer
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



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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.
-----
-Mark Twain

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