wee-weed up (UNCLASSIFIED)

Mullins, Bill AMRDEC Bill.Mullins at US.ARMY.MIL
Fri Aug 21 14:44:26 UTC 2009


Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

No matter what he meant, or how the term developed, I like it.

It's meaning is crystal clear, and I've never heard the phrased used
before, ever.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On
> Behalf Of Benjamin Zimmer
> Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2009 9:21 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: wee-weed up
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> --------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      wee-weed up
>
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> Any thoughts on this?
>
> ---
>
http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2009/08/obama_healthcar
> e_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.
> ---
>
> 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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