no laughing aside

[Jonathan Lighter]

OED has the relevant sense of "aside" from 1860 and 1871 only, with the
now-surprising query as to whether it is so used only in the U.S.

There are no exx. of "(all) kidding aside."

The earliest from NewspaperArchive:

1901 _Dubuque Daily Telegraph_ (Aug. 14) (unp.): But all "kidding" aside,
the party is out to have a real quiet time.

The earliest from GB:

1911 _The American Globe_ III (Jan.) 15: Kidding aside, my father writes me
that he likes the suit very much.

Roughly contemporaneous cites suggest that it's short for "Laying" or
"putting all kidding aside."

JL

On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 12:54 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: no laughing aside
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Many relevant hits for "no kidding aside" with the same meaning (even after
> eliminating the false positives for "No, kidding aside,…" and such).
>
> LH
>
> On Aug 23, 2011, at 10:02 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>
> > That's what the host of Lifetime's _The Balancing Act_ says when she
> means
> > "All kidding aside."
> >
> > It obviously "makes sense" if you don't know what "aside" means.
> >
> > JL
> >
> > --
> > "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
> truth."
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



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"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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