"can do so much"

Tom Zurinskas truespel at HOTMAIL.COM
Sat May 23 20:16:39 UTC 2009


If "can do so much" can actually mean "can do only so much", then perhaps Churchill really meant "Never have only so few owed only so much to only so many"?  I don't think so.  The sentence really needs "only" in there to make sense.



Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
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> Date: Sat, 23 May 2009 15:39:58 -0400
> From: hwgray at GMAIL.COM
> Subject: Re: "can do so much"
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Wilson Gray
> Subject: Re: "can do so much"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Was there any conclusion arrived at as to the (historical) origin of
> "I could care less"? I first heard it used in the Army in the late
> '50's. Neither I nor any other of the 400 or so recruits in my
> training company had ever heard it before - the phrase engendered much
> discussion in the barracks. Yet, among seasoned soldiers (BTW, has
> anybody else noticed that, on the TV show, NCIS, marines are almost
> always referred to as "soldiers"?), "I could care less" was already
> used as routinely as "fuckinay shitcan buttcan stockade one's bunk
> latrine (un-)ass KP personal weapon bitch box (a form of outdoor
> pulpit at Fort Leonard Wood; a barracks intercom, elsewhere)" and
> other examples of military jargon.
>
> -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 Sat, May 23, 2009 at 12:12 PM, Herb Stahlke wrote:
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>> Sender: Â Â Â American Dialect Society
>> Poster: Â Â Â Herb Stahlke
>> Subject: Â Â Â Re: "can do so much"
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> I'm sure there's been discussion before of "I could care less,"
>> meaning the same as "I couldn't care less." Â But I don't recognize
>> "can do so much" as the same sort of thing.
>>
>> Herb
>>
>> On Sat, May 23, 2009 at 8:34 AM, Arnold Zwicky wrote:
>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>>> Sender: Â Â Â American Dialect Society
>>> Poster: Â Â Â Arnold Zwicky
>>> Subject: Â Â Â "can do so much"
>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> Zalmay Khalizad (who has served as the U.S. ambassador to Iraq,
>>> Afghanistan, and the UN), speaking on the radio program It's Your
>>> World (a program of the World Affairs Council of Northern California),
>>> said "The military can do so much", clearly meaning, in the context,
>>> 'the military can do only so much' (i.e., not everything, or not a
>>> lot, while "the military can do so much" otherwise conveys 'the
>>> military can do a lot').
>>>
>>> i haven't found other examples that work this way, but it's not easy
>>> to search for them. it's entirely possible that Khalizad's sentence
>>> was a simple speech error, an inadvertent omission of "only", and it
>>> might be relevant that English is not Khalizad's native language
>>> (Persian is).
>>>
>>> anyone recall other examples of this sort?
>>>
>>> arnold
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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