N-looking

[Wilson Gray]

I'm with you, Jon. Formations of this type can be heard hundreds of
times in, e.g. barbershops, in certain neighborhoods. "Ugly,
King-Kong-looking stud" is one that I recall from grade school in the
'Forties. At the time, I thought that it was perhaps the
slide-splittingly-funniest thing that I'd ever heard.

-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 Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 6:16 PM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: N-looking
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Of course I can't swear, but I strongly, strongly believe that this
> construction (e.g., "some hippie-looking guy") has been in my rulebook for
> forty years if not longer.
>
> I've often used it - in speech - for its informal effect.
>
> JL
>
> On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 5:26 PM, Victor <aardvark66 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Victor <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject:      Re: N-looking
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Here are five examples. These are not easy to find and each represents
>> 100-200 similar occurrences. It took me about fifteen minutes to set up
>> a filter selective enough to ignore most other combinations. But if you
>> look for preselected combinations "N1 looking N2", it might be easier to
>> find some specific examples [where N1 is something that could plausibly
>> serve as a target (e.g., an animal or a type of individual, such as
>> bodyguard or janitor) and N2 is one of simple human descriptors, such as
>> man, woman, boy, girl, guy, girlfriend, etc.].
>>
>> The first three below were found using general filters eliminating
>> "looking P" combinations. The last two were found looking for more
>> specific patterns.
>>
>> VS-)
>>
>> http://www.traffictechnologytoday.com/news.php?NewsID=10370
>> _Animal-looking cars could cut road deaths_
>>
>> Road safety campaigners could cut the road death rate by lobbying for
>> cars to be made to look more like animals, claim researchers.
>>
>>
>> http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/6dbfi/creepy_angel_of_death_looking_sculpture_in_new/
>> Creepy _Angel of Death looking_ sculpture in New Orleans' Louis
>> Armstrong Airport [linked to http://www.flymsy.com/images/flying_man.jpg]
>>
>> http://www.dailyhaha.com/_pics/wet_cat.htm
>> A Wet Cat Looking Creature
>> [should be "A wet, cat-looking creature"]
>>
>> http://www.gamespot.com/pages/forums/show_msgs.php?topic_id=20628433
>> Is that the dumb MMO that you see in commercials where this dog looking
>> guy is throwing pies???
>>
>> http://www.arellanes.com/archives/000481.html
>> I saw Pavel Telic(ka, the newly-confirmed EU Commissioner for Health and
>> Consumer Affairs. He was chatting with a guy in a hockey jersey and with
>> another bodyguard-looking guy, trying to ignore a drunk who was
>> teetering dangerously close.
>>
>>
>> Mark Mandel wrote:
>> > I think of the construction "___-looking" as taking only adjectives,
>> > not nouns. I don't recall seeing "N-looking" before this item:
>> >
>> > Ancestor For All Animals Identified
>> > http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/01/27/animal-ancestor.html
>> >
>> > A sperm-looking creature called monosiga is the closest living
>> > surrogate to the ancestor of all animals, according to new research
>> > that also determined animal evolution may not always follow a
>> > trajectory from simple to complex.
>> >
>> > Mark Mandel
>> >
>> > ------------------------------------------------------------
>> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>> >
>> >
>>
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