how to classify? ("I don't want to beat it with a dead horse.")

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:56 AM -0400 6/18/10, Dan Goncharoff wrote:
>"Beat it with a stick"?
>
>DanG

like a rented red-headed step-mule

LH

>
>On 6/18/2010 10:41 AM, Cohen, Gerald Leonard wrote:
>>---------------------- Information from the mail header
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>>Sender:       American Dialect Society<ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>Poster:       "Cohen, Gerald Leonard"<gcohen at MST.EDU>
>>Subject:      Re: how to classify? ("I don't want to beat it with a dead
>>                horse.")
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>      In a sort of mental blender, the speaker made a jumble of
>>three phrases, although only two are clear to me: (1) "I don't want
>>to beat a dead horse," and  (2) "I don't want to beat it to death."
>>   For the third phrase (to account for "with") a possibility would
>>be something like: "I don't want to deal with this topic anymore."
>>But that's just a guess.
>>
>>Gerald Cohen
>>
>>________________________________
>>
>>Message from James A. Landau,  Fri 6/18/2010 7:15 AM:
>>
>>Heard in the lab:
>>
>>"I don't want to beat it with a dead horse"
>>
>>How do we classify this?
>>
>><snip>
>>
>>       - Jim Landau
>>
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>>
>
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