Heard on [adult swim]: "street" to "alley"?

Arnold Zwicky zwicky at STANFORD.EDU
Wed May 20 13:08:46 UTC 2009


On May 19, 2009, at 11:03 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:

>
> Among the *very* few people from the various branches of the past and
> present kingdom that I've known, I've heard, "right up your _street_"
> and "right up your _road_," but, never before, "right up your alley,"
> except from Canadians.

"right up your alley" is my only usage.  goggling gets 431k raw hits
for "alley", 64k for "street", none for "road".

some sites on slang suggest that "alley" is mostly american, "street"
mostly british, and that might be so, though it looks like both are
found in both places.

at least one site offers "right down your alley" as an alternative to
"right up your alley", and that sounds right to me.

arnold

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