I guaran-god-damn-tee it

[Wilson Gray]

The first such that I ever heard was,

"Gimme a hammer, some-motherfuckin'-body!"

spoken very much aloud by class lout, Alfred Barnes, 13, in the midst
of shop class.

At the time - in 1949, when I was in the eighth grade - I thought that
it was the funniest thing that I had ever heard. Indeed, I thought so
for many dekkids. That someone should split apart a word like
_somebody_ and then insert an obscenity into the gap... Well, it was
just too much for me. I cracked up over it for years.

-Wilson

On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 2:32 PM, Paul Frank <paulfrank at post.harvard.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Paul Frank <paulfrank at POST.HARVARD.EDU>
> Subject:      I guaran-god-damn-tee it
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I need to get out more. Here's an example of tmesis I hadn't come across before:
>
> "You're gonna run across some guys out there who don't like me, I
> guaran-dog-damn-tee it, but at the same time I bet there's not one of
> 'em that would say, 'I wouldn't take him in a firefight.' And that's
> what I'm looking for."
>
> Sebastian Junger, War, Kindle Edition, 2010, 60% into the book.
>
> Paul
>
> Paul Frank
> Translator
> German, French, Italian > English
> Rue du Midi 1, Aigle, Switzerland
> paulfrank at post.harvard.edu
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"––a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
–Mark Twain

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