"down to"?

[Jonathan Lighter]

Yeah, they say it a lot.

Sounds dumb.

JL

On Tue, Feb 8, 2011 at 3:01 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      "down to"?
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> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>  From a BBC story on the discovery of "The Discovery", pornographic
> poems inserted into an edition of "The Works of the Earls of
> Rochester and Roscommon":
>
> "The success of two best-selling volumes of poetry published in the
> 18th Century was down to pornographic poems hidden in the book, an
> academic has suggested."
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-12365355
>
> Is "down to" a Britishism?  I see it at down, adv., 28.a. "to be down
> to: to be attributable to", from 1955.
>
> Joel
>
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