empretzeled

[Laurence Horn]

At 4:05 PM -0400 5/22/09, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>At 5/21/2009 05:07 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>>At 4:47 PM -0400 5/21/09, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>>Sorry for the e-mail-outio praecox.  That last
>>message was supposed to have read:
>>
>>and their French cousin (or cousine?), "emmerdé"
>
>On this side of the pond, we used to say "be-s-----n".
>
>Joel

(be)shitten is amply attested on both sides of
the pond, as I discovered when I was making the
case for "spitten image" as the source of
"spittin'/spit an' image", but the examples I
found tended to be intended literally, while the
participles (or other forms) of the French
"(s')emmerder" and "faire chier" are mostly used
in figurative contexts, unless I'm much mistaken.

LH

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