_Break nasty_ = "jump salty"

George Thompson george.thompson at NYU.EDU
Sun May 2 23:57:42 UTC 2010


I months or so ago I heard Louis Armstrong sing a number with the expression "Jump Study" in the refrain.  Definitely "Study", not "Steady" (which would make some sense) or "Sturdy"

Probably dated from the later 1930s or ealy 1940s.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.

----- Original Message -----
From: Mark Mandel <thnidu at gmail.com>
Date: Sunday, May 2, 2010 10:51 am
Subject: Re: _Break nasty_ = "jump salty"
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU

> Interesting. I had not heard or seen either of these idioms before.
>
> "Jump nasty" immediately reminded me of a Dr. John song (N.Orleans, sixties
> - present) with the chorus
>
> Jump Sturdy, Jump Sturdy was her name.
> She came out the swamp like a crazy fool.
>
> But I don't see any plausible connection. (The song, titled "Jump Sturdy",
> is on his first LP, "*Gris-Gris"*, issued in the late sixties.)
>
> m a m
>
> On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 6:04 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Now in UD, with a surprising-reasonable set of definitions, from 2005.
> >
> > Otherwise, as far as the Web is concerned, _break nasty_ occurs only
> > in the environment immediately before "... habits."
> >
> > -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
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
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