wee-weed up
M Covarrubias
mcovarru at PURDUE.EDU
Fri Aug 21 03:23:59 UTC 2009
On Aug 20, 2009, at 10:20 PM, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>
> Any thoughts on this?
>
> ---
> ... "There is something about August going into September where
> everybody in
> Washington gets all wee-weed up,'' Obama said.
> ---
>
> 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).
i think i assumed he was blending "all riled up" with mimicking the
little piggy that went weeweewee all the way home. sort of like a
crazy little critter that runs around shrieking.
michael
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