"gun play"?

[George Thompson]

I was thinking of an analogy with statements like "the hoses played upon the fire", but this is another instance of JL's quotation Merriam-Webster neatly defines this sense of play as "Action; use."  Cf. "bring into play."
I had forgotten "swordplay"

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.

----- Original Message -----
From: Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
Date: Thursday, December 31, 2009 10:23 am
Subject: Re: "gun play"?
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU

> Most amazing to me is that anyone would associate "gun-play" with child's
> "play,"  except perversely.  "Gun-play" has always been part of the core
> vocabulary of pulp/
> Hollywood/ TV westerns, though admittedly these are not nearlyu as well
> known as they used to be.
>
> When I first learned "gun-play" as a child, I never associated it with
> any
> other kind of play. It was just a word. But perhaps that was just me.
>
> The word is patterned, of course, after the much older "swordplay."  1913
> Merriam-Webster neatly defines this sense of play as "Action; use."  Cf.
> "bring into play."
>
> Unlike Wilson, but like the writer of the headline, I think "gun-play"
> can
> involve the firing of a single shot by one person, as long as it's
> fired at
> something other than a stationary, competition target.  I can almost hear
> some villain in a western warning, "And remember: no gun-play!"
>
> JL
>
>
> On Wed, Dec 30, 2009 at 10:33 PM, Dave Hause <dwhause at jobe.net> wrote:
>
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Dave Hause <dwhause at JOBE.NET>
> > Subject:      Re: "gun play"?
> >
> > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > Alas!  What a change in drill instructors there must have been by 1965!
> >  You
> > never heard, "This is my rifle, this is my gun..."?
> > Dave Hause, dwhause at jobe.net
> > Waynesville, MO
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Wilson Gray" <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> >
> > During my own blessedly-peaceful military career, I never came across
> > the the word "play" associated in any way with the word, "gun."
> >
> > -Wilson
> >
> >  ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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