"down to"?

[Joel S. Berson]

At 2/8/2011 03:44 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>Yeah, they say it a lot.
>
>Sounds dumb.

I'm now glad I don't.  (I neglected to add that the OED refers one to
"put down to", which I could say.)

Joel


>JL
>
>On Tue, Feb 8, 2011 at 3:01 PM, 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:      "down to"?
> >
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> >  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
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
>
>
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>
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