no laughing aside

[Wilson Gray]

On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 1:25 PM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Roughly-contemporaneous cites suggest that it's short for "laying" or "putting all kidding aside."

FWIW, that strikes *me* as precisely the correct intuition.

--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org