Seen in thread on "fracket"

[Charles Doyle]

And, of course, it's a jocular reference to the archaic notion that anthropology is the province of researchers working in remote jungles or desolate prairies.

--Charlie


---- Original message ----
>Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2009 14:41:05 -0500
>From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> (on behalf of Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>)
>
>I read Larry's comment, "I didn't hear it live myself," to refer to the NPR broadcast -- so that would just be OED sense 10a, "heard or watched at the time of its occurrence." Can't say that I've noticed "live" being used in the sense you describe.
>
>As for "in the wild," that figurative usage has long been a favorite of urban folklorists. Here's one definition:
>
>---
>http://www.ulblog.org/urban-legend-definitions/
>Urban Legend fans and researchers often talk about encountering one story or another ‘in the wild’. This generally means that they encountered the story while it was still in circulation and that it was being communicated in a form in which the audience is encouraged to believe that the story is true.
>---
>
>Here's an example from the Usenet newsgroup alt.folklore.urban from
>1998 (in a thread also featuring our own Alice Faber):
>
>---
>http://groups.google.com/group/alt.folklore.urban/msg/a8bd2a6505a9594c
>"Dead Guy in Sportscar," alt.folklore.urban, Dec. 24, 1998
>I've never encountered this one in the wild, but it's featured in four of the three Brunvand books (_The Vanishing Hitchhiker_, _The Choking Doberman_, _The Mexican Pet_, and _The Baby Train_).
>---
>
>--Ben Zimmer

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