"Got your back"? (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Wilson Gray]

Back in the day, on an episode of Laugh-In, Flip Wilson turned to the
camera and said,

"When we take over, I'm going to - well, I [moN] - watch out for you!"

He could just as easily have said, instead,

"When we take over, I got your back!"

By coincidence, he didn't.

I may be going off the deep end, here, but, WTF? In the '40' and
'50's, horse-operas, Western pulps, and comic books, the protagonists
were often shown or described as standing back-to-back, blazing Colts
in hand, to hold off the Jimmy Boys, the Dalton Boys, the Younger
Brothers, etc.

As a consequence, I've always regarded this as the source of "I got
your back." IME, this isn't as old as the "holler" that I grew up
avoiding, because my mother used it, but it still goes back
uninterrupted in BE to my childhood.

Naturally, there's no way to predict the rate of spread of any phrase
among any group.

Some may recall that "Of course! AUXn't everyone?" was once a common,
gently-sarcastic way - among white people - of saying yes to a
question to which a positive response was obvious. If course, it could
be strongly sarcastic, when the answer to a question was clearly
negative

One time, in a foreign-book store, I was browsing through the Russian
section, when a clerk, whom I recognized as a moonlighting Harvard
grad student, wandered over.

Q. "Can you read Russian?!"
A. "Of course! Can't everyone?"

The next time that I was in the bookstore, I overheard a whisper:

"See that guy over there? He thinks that *everyone* can read Russian!"

He hadn't known that my answer was meant jocularly. I'd been thinking
that any collegiate-class white person would understand that.

Youneverknow.

OTOH, I was much impressed that the clerk hadn't said, "that *colored*
guy," given my natural impression that he had been surprised that a
*black* guy could read Russian and not merely that some random,
regular dood could read Russian.

Youneverknow.

Of course, my initial impression may have been correct, but regarding
it as hyper-sensitivity on my part makes life easier.

"Paranoia will destroy ya."

--
-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




On Thu, Dec 29, 2011 at 2:36 PM, Jesse Sheidlower <jester at panix.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Jesse Sheidlower <jester at PANIX.COM>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: "Got your back"? (UNCLASSIFIED)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> That's actually a different sense in OED, "a. to watch one's back: to be
> on one's guard; to be alert to a possible (physical) threat to oneself
> (sometimes literally an attack from behind). Freq. in imper. as a
> warning or threat.", with a first quotation from 1949. The definition
> for "to watch a person's back" is sense (b) of this.
>
> Jesse Sheidlower
> OED
>
> On Thu, Dec 29, 2011 at 01:23:41PM -0600, Mullins, Bill AMRDEC wrote:
>> Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
>> Caveats: NONE
>>
>> _Youngstown [OH] Vindicator_ 8/27/1972 p. A-15 col 1.
>> "Devastating sign dogging McGovern's campaign in Chicago: Â "McGovern's
>> 1,000 per cent behind you. Â Watch your back." "
>>
>> > -----Original Message-----
>> > From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On
>> Behalf Of
>> > Laurence Horn
>> > Sent: Thursday, December 29, 2011 8:51 AM
>> > To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>> > Subject: Re: "Got your back"?
>> >
>> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> ----------------------
>> > -
>> > Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> > Poster: Â  Â  Â  Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>> > Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: "Got your back"?
>> >
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> ------
>> > -
>> >
>> > On Dec 29, 2011, at 9:25 AM, Tom Zurinskas wrote:
>> >
>> > > Headline: Â "Need to Run Windows on Your Mac? Parallels Has Got Your
>> =
>> > Back"
>> > >=20
>> > > I suppose "has got your back" means "takes care of you". Â New one to
>> =
>> > me.
>> > >=20
>> > > =
>> >
>> http://chris.pirillo.com/need-to-run-windows-on-your-mac-parallels-has-g
>> ot=
>> > -your-back/
>> > >=20
>> > >=20
>> > It's not new. Â The OED has it from 1975:
>> >
>> > N. Amer. colloq. (orig. in African-American usage). to get (also have)
>> a =
>> > person's back : =3D to watch a person's back.
>> >
>> > 1975 Â  Â J. De Jongh Hail, hail, Gangs! (Electronic ed.) 6 Â  Two of
>> them =
>> > and one of you, but I got your back. Kick both of them in the ass.
>> > 1985 Â  Â Washington Post 29 Mar. e5/3 Â  Don't worry, Coach, I've got
>> your =
>> > back.
>> >
>> > as a variant of 'to watch a person's back':
>> >
>> > to watch a person's back : to protect or guard a person against =
>> > potential attack (sometimes literally from behind); (also) to support
>> or =
>> > assist a person.
>> >
>> > 1974 Â  Â =91J. le Carr=E9=92 Tinker, Tailor xvii. 145 Â  Clear a foreign
>> =
>> > letter box, prime a safe house, watch someone's back, spike an
>> embassy.
>> >
>> > LH
>> >
>> > ------------------------------------------------------------
>> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>> Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
>> Caveats: NONE
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



--
-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

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