More on rapping and rolling

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Fri Dec 3 04:45:46 UTC 2010


On "The Daily Show" tonight Jon Stewart cited "America's Tweetheart"
Sarah Palin's tweetophilia (my term, not theirs); when asked about
why she enjoys tweeting so much, she responded "I just tweet. That's
the way I roll." To which Stewart rhetorically queried, "When did you
become Snoop Dog?"  More evidence for a strong connection that I had
been unaware of (before our threads) between rappers and "how/the way
I roll".

LH
>
>At 1:55 AM +0100 6/17/10, Ben Zimmer wrote:
>>I haven't done anything on these, but Jesse was collecting examples
>>of the latter expression for the OED's revised "roll" entry. See
>>this 2006 thread:
>>
>><http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A1=ind0612b&L=ads-l&T=1#10>http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A1=ind0612b&L=ads-l&T=1#10
>>
>>...where Bill Mullins took it back to Hammer's 1991 song "This Is
>>the Way We Roll." Origin would appear to be in West Coast rap
>>usage, extended from the sense of "roll" relating to ostentatious
>>driving.
>>
>--Ben
>
>>On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 4:45 PM, Laurence Horn
>><<mailto:laurence.horn at yale.edu>laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>>
>>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>-----------------------
>>Sender:       American Dialect Society
>><<mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>Poster:       Laurence Horn
>><<mailto:laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>>Subject:      another query (re catch phrases)
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>For a (British) journalist's inquiry--anyone have anything on
>>
>>"Thank you (so much) for reaching out to me"
>>"That's how I roll"
>>...

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