"It is crispy and ridiculous!"

[Jonathan Lighter]

OED actually has the apposite "ridiculous" from 1959.

In "crispy and ridiculous," however, it seems to have lost, predictably,
most of its original force. Cf. "awesome," which thirty years ago meant
"extraordinarily good."  Now it's more like "quite good." Something
extraordinarily good would now be "fucking awesome."

JL

On Thu, Apr 7, 2011 at 12:04 PM, Garson O'Toole
<adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Garson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "It is crispy and ridiculous!"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Jonathan Lighter wrote
> > But seriously. The psychological trigger for laudatory "ridiculous" may
> be
> > that something is so astonishingly good, that if anybody had described it
> > beforehand, the normal, well-ordered mind would have scoffed.
> >
> > Similarly, laudatory "outrageous" may embody the idea that squares would
> be
> > outraged at the brilliant, defiant audacity of the thing.
> >
> > Of course, one of the first times I heard it, it was applied to a natural
> > landscape. But ignore that part.
>
> I have heard the expression " so good it's ridiculous" for years. Here
> are some raw Google Books matches:
>
> Lightfoot: if you could read his mind : a biography
> Maynard Collins - 1988 - 247 pages - Snippet view
> "We were so fucking good it was ridiculous," he smiles. Lightfoot
> disagrees, arguing that the group did not work hard enough to deserve
> first place and that the Teen-Timers did have flaws, both in song
> selection and in vocalising. ...
>
> Epoch: Volumes 36-37
> Cornell University - 1988 - Snippet view
> He's very tall and thin and his posture is so good it's ridiculous,
> it's scary. Nobody stands up that straight for no reason. I have some
> nicknames for him besides Giraffe but nicknames about good posture
> always sound dirty. ...
>
> Take Me to a Circus Tent: The Jefferson Airplane Flight Manual - Page 498
> Craig Fenton - 2006 - 552 pages - Preview
> He is so good it's ridiculous. His lead playing is great too. The way
> he plays rhythm is terrific. As time went on Greg was playing more
> solos that resembled the guitar hero, or the heavy metal side. It was
> Jorma's trip. ...
>
> Taking Off - Page 191
> Jenny Moss - 2010 - 352 pages - Google eBook - Preview
> He was so good looking it was ridiculous. I turned over to my side and
> looked at him. He touched my nose. “You look like Rudolph.” Then he
> took his new red scarf and wrapped it around both of us. “It's good
> you made it so long. ...
>
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