wreck and ruin
Jonathan Lighter
wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM
Fri Feb 5 22:00:33 UTC 2010
OED has the prescriptively "correct" "rack and ruin" sv "rack," but an
advanced search turns up the despised "wreck and ruin,"
which makes no less sense, from the 1880s.
Here's another:
1901 in H. G. Wells _Twelve Stories and a Dream_ (London: Macmillan, 1903)
297: I...left all those things to wreck and ruin just to save a remnant at
least of my life.
JL
--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
More information about the Ads-l
mailing list