"soft baked"; and "no great kicks"

[Laurence Horn]

At 1:06 PM -0400 7/23/10, Garson O'Toole wrote:
>An edition of Farmer and Henley in 1905 connects half-baked and soft-baked.
>
>1905 "A Dictionary of Slang and Colloquial English: Abridged from the
>seven volume work entitled Slang and its Analogues" by John S. Farmer
>and W. E. Henley, George Routledge & Sons Limited, London.
>
>Half-baked (or Soft-baked). Half-
>witted, cracked, soft (q.v.), doughy
>(q.v.), half-rocked (q.v.): Fr., n'avoir
>pas la tete bien cuite (1825)

Ah, my mistake.  I looked under "baked" and "soft(-baked)" but not
under "half(-baked)".  It's right there in my edition (Arno Press
reprint, 1970).

LH

>
>http://books.google.com/books?id=kOU_AAAAYAAJ&q=soft-baked#v=snippet&
>
>On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 11:30 AM, Laurence Horn
><laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>-----------------------
>>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>  Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>>  Subject:      Re: "soft baked"; and "no great kicks"
>>
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>  At 9:57 AM -0400 7/23/10, George Thompson wrote:
>>>Jonathon Green is no longer one of us, so I forwarded this item to
>>>him.  He replies that Farmer & Henley give "soft-baked" as an
>>>alternative form of "half-baked". I hadn't checked that book.
>>>
>>  In my edition, I don't see it.  Under BAKED they give "half-baked"
>>  ('said of a dull-witted or imbecile person') but not "soft-baked".
>>  Under SOFT they have a lot of colo(u)rful or curious entries--
>>
>>  "Hard (arse) or soft?" = 'third class or first?'
>>  "A bit of hard for a bit of soft" (venery) = 'copulation'
>>  "Soft-ball" (Royal Military Academy) = 'tennis'
>>
>>  --but nothing on "soft-baked".
>>
>>  LH
>>
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