HDAS on TV

[Ben Zimmer]

On Tue, Nov 9, 2010 at 9:58 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>
> At 2:00 PM +0000 11/9/10, Charles C Doyle wrote:
> >Last night I was watching a rerun of "NCIS" on the USA network.  The
> >regular character who is a young Israeli woman notable for
> >fracturing English idioms was shown (very briefly) studying a tome
> >that was clearly recognizable as HDAS.
>
> Volume I or II?  (You can, of course, tell from the cover color
> pattern.)  May have been a crucial clue!

If Charlie's talking about the scene below, then it wasn't HDAS at
all, but a mere knockoff called "The Handbook of American Slang":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kQRPH6tMEc

The cover has a suspiciously familiar typeface, and the color scheme
(red-white-blue) follows HDAS II.

--bgz

--
Ben Zimmer
http://benzimmer.com/

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