an X to end all Xes

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Wed Nov 17 07:07:04 UTC 2010


On Tue, Nov 16, 2010 at 3:28 PM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> quoted and wrote:

> "white as a baby's butt"

Uh, what?

> I well recall the idiom from my childhood.

Me, too,

> It sounds perfectly natural to me.

As a matter of fact. (An idiom indicating strong agreement, hip in the
former Army Security Agency in the '60's. Its derivation is the
obvious one. It was spoken with the intonation-pattern of, "[The earth
orbits the sun.] It's a matter a fact." and not with that of, "As a
matter of fact, [the earth orbits the sun.]")

--
-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

Once we recognize that we do not err out of laziness, stupidity,
or evil intent, we can uncumber ourselves of the impossible burden of
trying to be permanently right. We can take seriously the proposition
that we could be in error, without necessarily deeming ourselves
idiotic or unworthy.
–Kathryn Schulz

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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