Dorothy Parker and Vassar girls?

Fri Mar 6 22:32:27 UTC 2009

Fred Shapiro's Yale Dictionary of Quotations attributes it in Wolcott's
essay about Parker(1934), but no mention of Vassar.

Sam Clements

----- Original Message -----
From: "Laurence Horn" <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Friday, March 06, 2009 11:48
Subject: Re: Dorothy Parker and Vassar girls?

> At 11:08 AM -0500 3/6/09, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>>Since I attended Vassar for several years,* I was curious.  Did
>>Parker actually say "Vassar girls"?  Wikipedia says Woolcott's
>>biographical essay on Parker is the only source, and reports it as
>>"If all the girls attending it ...", a Yale prom.
>>
>>Joel
>
> Aha! You're more in the know than I am, and I probably just heard the
> line in an apocryphal version, which is however well-known.  Googling
> "Dorothy Parker" + "If all the girls at Vassar" pulls up 70 instances
> of the aphorism, which in fact isn't *too* distant from Woolcott's
> version, given the standard assumptions of the era about Yale, and
> Vassar, and proms.  Then there are the hits presupposing it, such as
> this one, which I find...well, I was going to say inscrutable, but I
> won't go there:
>
> http://www.musicmash.net/band/thomas-brinkmann/klick-revolution/
> Apologies to Dorothy Parker (and Vassar girls), but if Thomas
> Brinkmann laid every lock groove end to end, I wouldn't be surprised.
>
> LH
>
>>* For the curious, I was 3, 4, and 6, and during those years I
>>attended Arnold Gesell's summer laboratory in child develoopment (or
>>so the ancestral legend handed down to me says).  Of course, the
>>Gesells do connect Yale and Vassar.
>>
>>JSB
>>
>>At 3/6/2009 09:21 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>>>At 2:48 PM -0500 3/3/09, Bill Palmer wrote:
>>>>I'm thinking that linguists are like economists, who, in the well known
>>>>phrase, could be laid end to end and never reach a conclucion.
>>>>
>>>>Bill
>>>
>>>Not quite as vivid as Dorothy Parker's well-known variation,
>>>involving "Vassar girls".
>>>
>>>LH
>>>
>>>>----- Original Message -----
>>>>From: "Baker, John" <JMB at STRADLEY.COM>
>>>>To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>>>Sent: Tuesday, March 03, 2009 2:24 PM
>>>>Subject: Re: Snow
>>>>
>>>>>---------------------- Information from the mail
>>>>>header -----------------------
>>>>>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>>>>Poster:       "Baker, John" <JMB at STRADLEY.COM>
>>>>>Subject:      Re: Snow
>>>>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>>
>>>>>        MWDEU's examples are "Ten dollars is all I have left," "Two
>>>>>miles is as far as they can walk," and "Two thirds of the area is under
>>>>>water."  In such cases, a singular verb seems far preferable, although
>>>>>you can contrive examples such as "I came to town with forty silver
>>>>>dollars, and now ten dollars are all I have left."
>>>>>
>>>>>        On reflection, I believe that the analysis given by Arnold
>>>>>Zwicky (and, posting earlier, Larry Horn) is superior to the one I had
>>>>>given (not that that should be surprising).  I had suggested that a
>>>>>singular verb could be used if the subject were considered to be a
>>>>>single expectation.  That doesn't hold up very well with sentences such
>>>>>as *"Thirteen crates of oranges is expected," although it again is
>>>>>probably possible to contrive an example allowing a singular verb.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>John Baker
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>-----Original Message-----
>>>>>From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On
>>>>>Behalf
>>>>>Of Arnold Zwicky
>>>>>Sent: Tuesday, March 03, 2009 11:04 AM
>>>>>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>>>>>Subject: Re: Snow
>>>>>
>>>>>(i've reorganized the postings in this thread to put them into temporal
>>>>>sequence.)
>>>>>
>>>>>>On Sun, Mar 1, 2009 at 7:51 PM, Bill Palmer
>>>>>><w_a_palmer at bellsouth.net>wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>Bianca Solorzano of CBS News reported this evening that "13 inches of
>>>>>
>>>>>>>snow are expected in New York."
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>The expectations are for what: inches or snow?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>"Is" or "are"?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On
>>>>>>Behalf Of Jonathan Lighter
>>>>>>Sent: Sunday, March 01, 2009 10:26 PM
>>>>>>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>>>>>>Subject: Re: Snow
>>>>>>
>>>>>>The object of a preposition cannot be the subject of a sentence. So
>>>>>>"inches," not "snow," is (not "are") the subject, and "are" (not "is")
>>>>>
>>>>>>is correct.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>On Mar 1, 2009, at 8:06 PM, John Baker wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>        I would think that the subject could be either "inches" (in
>>>>>>which case "are" would be correct) or "13 inches of snow,"
>>>>>>considered as
>>>>>>a single expectation (in which case "is" would be correct).  MWDEU, at
>>>>>
>>>>>>56, seems to prefer the singular verb, though I am comfortable with
>>>>>>either.
>>>>>
>>>>>MWDEU's examples are not as complex as "13 inches of snow".  what makes
>>>>>this NP complex is that there are two possible analyses for it
>>>>>(corresponding to the two interpretations John Baker sees): one in
>>>>>which
>>>>>"13 inches" is the head and "of snow" is a complement to it, and one in
>>>>>which "snow" is the head and "13 inches" is a quantity determiner
>>>>>(requiring that the head be marked by the preposition "of").  in the
>>>>>first, the NP is plural, because its head is plural; in the second, the
>>>>>NP is singular, because its head (the mass noun
>>>>>"snow") is singular.
>>>>>
>>>>>like John Baker, i'm comfortable with either, though some circumstances
>>>>>would favor one over the other.
>>>>>
>>>>>arnold
>>>>>
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>>>>>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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>>>>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>>
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>>>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
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>
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