drive it over the hill

Victor aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM
Mon Feb 16 00:25:34 UTC 2009


Just heard from a caller on Car Talk (or Cah Tahk):

"I hate it so much, I just want to drive it over the hill and never see
it again."

Google shows surprisingly few uses of "drive/drove it over a/the hill"
in the sense of "get rid of it" or "destroy it" (or in any other sense,
for that matter--between 2 and 8 hits for any of the combinations, with
at least half talking about golf shots). It's possible that where I see
a potential messed up metaphor, it might just be literal use. But, to
me, it seems to be an odd blend of "drive/run it into the ground" and
"get over the hill" with, perhaps, another couple of metaphors running
interference. The literal use is usually for golf shots, not for cars
(although I did come across a couple "I'll drive it over the hill to the
dealership," or something of that sort). For comparison, "drive them
over the hill" gets over 1600 raw hits, which mostly appear to be literal.

http://www.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?b=1&f=5&t=821119
In fact, one of them, driving a ‘Daddy bought me’ Shelby Mustang (NOT a
Cobra!) tried to beat me and lost it on a curve and practically
destroyed the entire car when he drove it over the hill. Daddy took it
away from him right after that exploit.

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=155951267
yeah im stoked. craig drove it over the hill. still needs some tweeking
tho. but im glad its home and running. cant wait to start cruising
around in that bay boy. but not that the bug is out of the way... time
to work on the fairlane! woot woot!

http://www.justanswer.com/questions/16i2p-hi-toyota-22r-85-4by4-pick
I just changed out the carburetor and this is what went down the other day.
I drove it over the hill. Yes it got hot and then stopped to get lunch
got back in it and it misfired like never before than went in to a pined
hi idle, I shut it down and it had a hard time doing that as it was
dieseling.

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



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