"the whole schlemiel"

[Laurence Horn]

At 1:38 PM -0400 8/20/09, Victor Steinbok wrote:
>Unless it's a NYC thing or some Seinfeldianism, it makes little sense to
>me too. "The whole shmear" just doesn't sound right... Of course, there
>are a lot of yidcorns out there that have little to do with their
>Yiddish origins. This could be one of them--kind of like the evolution
>of "mano a mano", which far too many American monolinguals think means
>"man to man". (And no, I did not mean to imply that "mano a mano" has
>anything to do with Yiddish ;-)
>
>    VS-)

That one we had a thread on a while back:

http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0412B&L=ads-l&P=R8832

and even earlier it featured in Arnold's classic Language Log posting
on eggcorns (2004):
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001390.html

as well as earning an entry in Chris Waigl's eggcorn database--
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/index.php?s=mano+y+mano
--which includes "mano on mano" as well as the other telltale
variants I mentioned earlier (womano-a-womano, mano y mano).  As
Chris says, "The form mano-on-mano turns this covert eggcorn into an
overt one."

LH

>
>Laurence Horn wrote:
>>At 11:23 AM -0500 8/20/09, Jim Parish wrote:
>>
>>>Seen in an online discussion of health-care reform:
>>>
>>>"I don't get it. Even if some Democrats want the whole schlemiel...
>>>[laundry list of possible features], it still doesn't change the fact that
>>>none of these things are in this particular bill."
>>>
>>>Google gives about 1470 hits for "whole schlemiel"; some are spurious
>>>("the whole 'schlemiel, schlemazel' thing"), but most seem to use it in
>>>place of "the whole schmear" or something similar.
>>>
>>Or, to switch ethnicities, "the whole shebang".  At least I assume
>>that's Hibernian, although the AHD says origin unknown.  "The whole
>>enchilada" is possible semantically, but unlikely to be a blend
>>source phonologically.  "The whole shmear"?  Really?  That seems
>>impossible to me, but then I know what a shmear is, at least in New
>>York.  "The whole megilla", yes, but again the phonology is off.
>>
>>LH
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org