the (ambivalent) schneid

[Laurence Horn]

In my experience, being "on the schneid" is to be on a losing streak,
or more specifically to get shut out (in sports contexts).  Today,
one of the commentators in the Fox Sports post-game show (Curt
Menafee?) introduced his wrap-up of today's big win by the Atlanta
Falcons (who had lost and not scored a touchdown in their season
opener last week) commented "Atlanta got ON the schneid", clearly
contrasting it minimally with "off the schneid", which normally
refers to breaking a winless streak, which is what they did.

I assume that this reanalysis was motivated by the fact that "on"
*seems* more positive than "off", and that "schneid" is pretty opaque
for those who don't know German and/or Yiddish.  Googling "got on the
schneid" pulls up 3 hits, all involving the same reanalysis (they'd
pretty much have to), e.g. "Duke finally got on the schneid last
night. They played great for the first 30 minutes, and completely
squashed the spirit of BC".

(There were 635 actual hits for the compositional "get/got off the
schneid" version.)

LH

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