"my bad"

[Wilson Gray]

Somebody "The Goat" Manigault.

Sometimes, I forget that not every post is meant to be taken as
reality, despite the fact 90% of my own posts are for the fun of it.
My bad. :-)

So, IAC, we have in mind not *ordinary* playground pick-up games, but
the semi-pro kind such as are reported upon in the NYT sports section
and whose national-championship tournament is, or has been, at least
once, IAC, shown on national TV. Certainly, a baller can make enough
money playing at that level to make a run to Nashville, if he feels
like it, or a relative might indeed invite him to come back down home
to play as a ringer against the local ballers.

That's absolutely reasonable. But that doesn't tell us much about how
slang gets spread, because it's a mystery as to how slang becomes
popular locally in the first place. "Be down with NP" - same meaning
as today - came to Saint Louis from Kansas City and was also heard in
the R&B of the day. Didn't catch on in Louietown. A buddy in L.A.
tried to introduce "I'm so pushed" as an alternative to "I'm hip."
Didn't catch on, even with me, his ace boon. I heard "break nasty" and
"break bad" at approximately the same time in L.A. "Break nasty"
caught on. "Break bad" died in its cradle. Yet, somewhere else, "break
bad" became so hip that it's in HDAS, whereas poor Jon has only my
word that there was ever any such phrase as "break nasty." "Holler
(at)"/"holla (at)" was popular so long ago that I can recall with
absolute certainty only that my mother used it. Yet, here it is,
again, risen from the grave. How does something like that happen?

-Wilson


On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 10:15 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: "my bad"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Wilson, I was joshing about itinerant pickup basketball players.  But
> my serious point was that it seemed unlikely that an oral expression
> of 1980 New York City schoolyard basketball games could travel to
> Nashville the same year.
>
> A pick-up schoolyard basketball player would be a ringer if he were
> an out-of-town NBA pro not known locally.  Or even an out-of-town
> schoolyard basketball super-star not known locally.  Who was the NYC
> schoolyard basketball whiz (of the 1960s?) everyone thought could
> have been a pro?
>
> (The money would come from successfully betting on
> himself.  Especially if he could get better odds away from home.)
>
> Joel
>
> At 4/30/2010 05:04 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>>Joel, where would a random pick-up basketball player get the money for
>>that kind of traveling? Under what circumstances could a pick-up
>>basketball player be a "ringer"?
>>
>>On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 2:30 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
>> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> > Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
>> > Subject:      Re: "my bad"
>> >
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> >
>> > At 4/30/2010 02:18 PM, victor steinbok wrote:
>> >>But even beyond that, pick-up basketball games in the 1970s and the
>> >>early 1980s, at least, were a melting pot of sociolects.
>> >
>> > But were there "ringers", travelling pickup basketball players, who
>> > peripatated from, say, Brooklyn to Nashville, and brought bad with them?
>> >
>> > Joel
>
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--
-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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