shellacking

[Wilson Gray]

On Fri, Nov 5, 2010 at 8:07 AM, Charles C Doyle <cdoyle at uga.edu> wrote:

> Obama's use of the gerund "shellacking" sounded so ordinary to me that I was surprised at all the attention the word is receiving! Â I have known and used it (in that sense) all my life.
>
> Might it be limited (or have become limited since the 1920s), to Southern and African American dialects?
>
> --Charlie
>

OT. We - in the broad sense - got a rather negative mention in SI, Charlie:

"[In the baller-rapes-cheerleader-case,] [t]hey chose to support the
athlete . They chose to support the male. It's just good ol'
testosteronic _East Texas_."

The article was about a bad scene at the high school in Silsbee.

BTW, the baller was a two-letter man - rare these days; does anyone
else recall the now-obsolete *four*-letter man? - in football *and*
basketball!

Wal, hail! I teh ya what!

As the attorney for the local board of education, who had successfully
defended the high school against the girl's family's civil suit, put
it,

"If there was something to apologize for, we would."

--
-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