(across the) "block" ~= street, and the OED?

Fri Apr 29 17:08:20 UTC 2011

Not quite for me, although I agree about "same block" vs. "same street".

"Down the block" is less than one street (it's within the same areal
block).  "Down the street" is indeterminate -- can be the same block
or some number of crossings away.  "Down N blocks/N streets down"
(which are the same) is N blocks away, even if N = 1.*  My dialect
prefers "down N blocks" to "N streets down".

But maybe YBID.  Although I would say the same in Manhattan.

* The number of crossings may be one less than the number of
blocks.  E.g., if I'm standing on the northwest corner of 57th and
Fifth, the south side of 59th is still two blocks away (one
crossing), as is the park (two crossings).

Joel

At 4/29/2011 12:14 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>Also in '50s Manhattan.
>
>JL
>
>On Fri, Apr 29, 2011 at 12:09 PM, Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at GMAIL.COM>
> > Subject:      Re: (across the) "block" ~= street, and the OED?
> >
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > In my Brooklyn childhood, there was a key difference "block" and
> > "street" -- block referred to a part of the street between two cross
> > streets. If we live on the same street, we may not live on the same
> > block. "Down the street" might be further away than "down the block".
> >
> > DanG
> >
> > On Fri, Apr 29, 2011 at 11:19 AM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
> > > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > -----------------------
> > > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > > Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> > > Subject:      Re: (across the) "block" ~= street, and the OED?
> > >
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > >
> > > At 4/29/2011 08:48 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> > >>Strangely, I can't recall whether it was possible to go "across the
> > block"
> > >>(i.e., straight across the street), but I doubt it. My ambivalence may
> > >>reflect a childhood usage that I had to abandon as too advanced for
> > society
> > >>at that time.
> > >
> > > I don't know what part of NYC you were a child in, Jon (if indeed you
> > > were a child in NYC), but when I was a child there, there was too
> > > much dangerous traffic to go across the block ...
> > > unaccompanied.  (While that was in the Bronx, I don't think it was
> > > Jennifer Lopez's block.)
> > >
> > > But seriously, I can imagine (but will not avow) having said "he
> > > lives across the block from me" -- another usage that seems to make
> > > "block" linear rather than planar.  As Wilson noted, "N blocks away"
> > > is a line, whether straight, with angles, or curved, stretching N
> > streets.
> > >
> > > And for "across the block" -- from Google --
> > >
> > > 1)  Stupid kids from across the block. Tire swing accident.  1 min -
> > > Jun 16, 2010 - Youtube.
> > >
> > > 2)  Prototype 2 trailer throws a man across the block.  Mar 16, 2011
> > > ... In this case, the trick is throwing a man so hard that he flies
> > > across the block, hits a car, and then explodes in a massive shockwave of
> > ...
> > >
> > > 3)  little dude from across the streets friend from across the block
> > > ...Facebook.
> > >
> > >
> > >  From Google Books (Full view) --
> > >
> > > 1)  1864 [the earliest I saw] -- Journals of the Senate and Assembly
> > > of the Fifteenth Session of the Legislature of the State of
> > > California. Volume 2.  Sacramento: O. M. Clayes, State
> > > Printer.  1864.  [Multiple documents, multiple paginations.]  In
> > > "Reports and Proceedings of the Joint Committee of the Legislature to
> > > Investigate the Destruction of the Battery of Guns, March 14, 1864"
> > > (document 10).  Page [not 58 but] 59:
> > >
> > > "Answer.---I live on the southwest corner of Thirteenth and M
> > > streets, fronting this building, across the block from it. When the
> > > alarm was first given, was tending to my horses at the stables in the
> > > roar of my house."
> > >
> > > [Probably "Fifth Session. Saturday, March 19 1[864]."]
> > >
> > >
> > > 2)  1884 -- Index to the Miscellaneous Documents of the House of
> > > Representatives for the First Session of the Forty-Eighth Congress,
> > > 1883-'84. In Forty Volumes.  Washington: Government Printing Office.
> > > 1884.  [Multiple paginations.]  In "48th Congress, 1st
> > > Session.  House of Representatives.  Mis. Doc., No. 59. Site for
> > > Public Building in Brooklyn, N.Y. Testimony taken before the
> > > Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds Relative to the purchase of
> > > a site for a public building in Brooklyn, N.Y.  June 17,
> > > 1884.---Ordered to be printed."  Page 155 [p. 550 in PDF]:
> > >
> > > ---A. No, sir; but they could get off at the proper place and walk
> > > across the block.
> > > Q. It is more than a block across there; it is about five blocks, is
> > > it not?---A. Oh, hardly so much as that, I think.
> > > Q. Do you know the distance:---A. Well, I do not think it is more
> > > than two or three blocks.
> > >
> > > [Page 154 dates testimony "Brooklyn, N.Y., June 9, 1884."]
> > >
> > > "Distance" seems definitive.
> > >
> > >
> > > 3)  1914 --  Forty-Third Annual report of the Railroad and Warehouse
> > > Commission of the State of Illinois for the Year Ending June 30,
> > > 1913, Volume 2.  Springfield: Illinois State Journal Co. 1914. Volume
> > > 43 - Page 236:
> > >
> > > "The practice of the people it appears from the record is to leave
> > > Oak Street, go across the block between the elevators and between the
> > > box cars across the side track and across the main track to the
> > > depot, all of which is more or less ...  [spoiler alert] dangerous."
> > >
> > > ----------
> > > So the expression was in use in my youth.
> > >
> > > Joel
> > >
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