ticktock

[Wilson Gray]

WTF does "ticktock(s)" mean, in this context?

-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Mark Twain



On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 11:15 PM, Benjamin Zimmer
<bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: ticktock
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 10:59 PM, George Thompson
> <george.thompson at nyu.edu> wrote:
>>
>>
>> New York Times, February 19, 2009, section A, p. 21, profile of Lawrence Summers:
>>
>> As to whether he backed Mr. Geithner's decision to introduce the bank bailout plan before
>> arriving at specifics, Mr. Summers, well schooled in Washington's ways, invoked newspaper
>> slang for behind-the-scenes tales.
>>
>> "I just don't do ticktock," he said flatly.
>>
>> This sense is not in the OED nor in the 2005 edition of the Cassell Slang Dictionary.
>
> Cites back to 1973 in my post here:
>
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0506A&L=ADS-L&P=R458
>
> As Grant Barrett noted offlist, the Summers quote is a bit different,
> since "ticktock" appears as a mass noun. I wonder if he actually said
> "I just don't do ticktocks" and was misquoted?
>
>
> --Ben Zimmer
>
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