wee-weed up

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:20 PM -0400 8/20/09, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>Any thoughts on this?
>
>---
>http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2009/08/obama_healthcare_rumors.html"Sometimes
>it seems like one loud voice can drown out all the sensible voices out
>there,'' President Barack Obama told supporters at a meeting of the
>Democratic Party-sponsored Organizing for America today Web-cast to a
>national network watching on the Internet, plus an audience listening to a
>telephone conference.
>"There is something about August going into September where everybody in
>Washington gets all wee-weed up,'' Obama said.
>---

Hmm.  Maybe he's just feeling wee-weed off, understandably enough.
Wonder if Jon Stewart will do anything with it tonight.

LH

>
>There's plenty of silly speculation online about Obama's usage. My best
>guess is that he was reaching for a euphemization of, perhaps, the "AFU" of
>"SNAFU" or something similar, and ended up with the wrong euphemism. The end
>result sounds like he's trying to euphemize "all pissed up," which doesn't
>mean much in AmE (though I suppose it would mean "very drunk" in BrE).
>
>
>--Ben Zimmer
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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