Most Notable Quotations of 2010

[Jonathan Lighter]

I like "Don't retreat! Reload!" for so many reasons.

1. It covers "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again" as well as
"Don't get mad, get even!"

2. It's shorter than they are.

3. It both alliterates and assonates. Five syllables with only two vocalic
phonemes!

4. It implies that the world is uniformly a violent, desperate,
zero-sum place where lead are always flying - the way pop culture lies it!

5. It makes the adviser sound like she's got lots more sense and
guts than the advisee - always useful when offering advice.

6. It can also be used in debates on Iraq and Afghanistan

Pretty nifty for four short words!

JL


On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 9:30 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Most Notable Quotations of 2010
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 9:14 PM -0500 11/19/10, Shapiro, Fred wrote:
> >I am now working on my list for the Associated Press of the top 10
> >most notable quotations of the year.  By "notable" I mean
> >"important" or "famous" or "particularly revealing of the spirit of
> >our times" rather than necessarily being eloquent or admirable.
> >
> >Some of the possibiliities (many of them very helpfully suggested by
> >Ben Zimmer) include:
> >
> >Government isn't what our Founding Fathers put into the Constitution.
> >Sharron Angle
> >
> >I'd like my life back.
> >Tony Hayward
> >
> >Dude, you have no Koran!
> >Jacob Isom
> >
> >I'm going to take my talents to South Beach.
> >LeBron James
> >
> >I'm not a witch.  I'm nothing you've heard.  I'm you.
> >Christine O'Donnell
> >
> >We live in hard times, not End Times.
> >Jon Stewart
> >
> >I would welcome suggestions of additional quotes from 2010,
> >particularly ones from politics or popular culture or entertainment
> >or sports or business or technology.
> >
> >Fred Shapiro
> >
>
> Did anyone have any response to Jon's posting from Wednesday re
> "Don't retreat! Reload!"--
>
> Is Sarah Palin really the coiner of this new proverb with over 1,000,000
> raw
> Google hits?
>
> GB has nothing before SP, 2010.
>
> ?  If not, I think it's worth adding to the list.  At least it's
> something she actually says (repeatedly), as opposed to "I can see
> Russia from my house"....
>
> LH
>
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