"or so"

[David A. Daniel]

"A hundred bucks or so" means, to me, around $100. Could be more, or less.
DAD

-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
Jesse Sheidlower
Sent: Monday, September 08, 2008 6:12 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: "or so"


On Mon, Sep 08, 2008 at 01:56:12PM -0700, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> In my Standard Idiolect of English, the phrase "or so" means
"approximately but at least." So you could have knocked me down with a dodo
feather when I read the following:
>
> 2008 Roberta Frank, "Afterword," in Burton Raffel, trans. _Beowulf_ (N.Y.:
Signet) 141:
> The vivid rendering of _Beowulf_ by Burton Raffel [published in 1963] has
held up well over the past half century or so."
>
> I got news for you, Roberta Frank, Marie Borroff Professor of English at
Yale University! 1963 is not fifty years ago "or so." It's forty-five years
ago and, by God, it's going to stay that way!
>
> Does anybody here feel any different?

Yes. It doesn't have that nuance to me; _or so_ is just
'approximately' in my idiolect.

Jesse Sheidlower
OED

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