"Ya gotta love it!"

[Jonathan Lighter]

The earlier, literal sense.  And a thinker ahead of his time!

JL

On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 10:43 AM, Garson O'Toole
<adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Garson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "Ya gotta love it!"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> In the early example below the phrase refers to a compulsion.
>
> For the National Era. Leonard Wray. a Romance of Modern History
> Date: 1854-08-10; Page 1; Column 2;
> Paper: National Era (GenealogyBank)
>
> You gambles desperate. You does it for the sake of the thing. You've
> got to love it; and if death and damnation stood atwixt you and the
> table, you'd leap clean through both, rather than be baulked of your
> chance.
>
> (Errors are likely when reading and retyping scanned microfilm of
> degraded text.)
>
> On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 10:13 AM, Stephen Goranson <goranson at duke.edu>
> wrote:
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> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Stephen Goranson <goranson at DUKE.EDU>
> > Subject:      Re: "Ya gotta love it!"
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > FWIW, Enos Slaughter is quoted in some 1952 newspapers saying of baseball
>  "You gotta love it."
> >
> > Stephen
> > ________________________________________
> > From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
> Jonathan Lighter [wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM]
> > Sent: Tuesday, July 20, 2010 10:01 AM
> > To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> > Subject: [ADS-L] "Ya gotta love it!"
> >
> > Gov. Palin's exclamation of enthusiasm for a language that can produce
> > indispensible new words like "refudiate" was "Gotta celebrate it!"
> >
> > That reminded me, of course, of the now widespread "(Ya) gotta love it!"
> > meaning, basically, "I love it!" or "It's great!"  (Very rarely spelled
> "You
> > got to love it!" and never, AFAIK and of course, "You've..." or "You
> > have...."
> >
> > How long has this been around? My rough guess was about twenty years,
> > but that was considerably off.
> >
> > A search of GB reveals an alleged (but necessarily suspect) 1953 ex. in
> > _Flying_ magazine. Snippet view only, Clyde!
> >
> > The phrase seems to explode around 1972.  Of interest is that the
> earliest
> > exx. (most all with "Ya") tend to express a command rather than
> enthusiasm.
> > Made-up ex.: "How can you leap from perfectly good airplanes for fun?"
> "Ya
> > gotta love it!"  In other words, "One must be thoroughly dedicated to the
> > task or experience for its own sake."
> >
> > Later usage, of course, is applied differently.
> >
> > Certainly it should be in OED. But isn't.
> >
> > JL
> >
> >
> > --
> > "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
> truth."
> >
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> >
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"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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