lipstick on a pig

[Scot LaFaive]

I sat through 20 minutes of gibberish to catch you on their, Grant. Of all
the worthwhile things to talk about with lexicography, it's a shame most
people only care about it with such silly "issues."

Scot

On Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 10:59 AM, Grant Barrett
<gbarrett at worldnewyork.org>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Grant Barrett <gbarrett at WORLDNEWYORK.ORG>
> Subject:      Re: lipstick on a pig
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> It looks like Google's new newspaper initiative is paying off already.
>
> Here's a 198o use that, while it doesn't mention lipstick, is entirely
> in line with the other variants: "dressing up a pig/hog," "putting
> makeup on a pig/ hog", "perfume on a pig/hog," etc.
>
> http://tinyurl.com/piglipstick
>
> 1980 Quad-City Herald (Brewster, Wash.) (Jan. 31) "The Country Parson"
> p. 3: You can clean up a pig, put a ribbon on it's [sic] tail, spray
> it with perfume, but it is still a pig.
>
> By the way, I'm scheduled to speak about this on Fox News today at
> 1:30 PM EDT, so thanks for the tips about this term so far (including
> older stuff from Barry Popik in the archives).
>
> Grant Barrett
> gbarrett at worldnewyork.org
>
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