baked in the cake; drawers

[George Thompson]

In ca. 1960, a professor of French at Boston University, a guy who
specialized in contemporary French writing, told me that Samuel Beckett had
pointed out to him a passage in a George Eliot novel in which a female
character was said to have black, glossy curls in her drawers -- referring
to a hairpiece she kept in her vanity table.
At the time, the story came with sufficient detail that with the help of a
handbook of Eliot's characters -- we used books back then -- I was able to
find the passage.  Those clues have since been forgotten, though doubtless
all her novels have been digitized.  The passage as I quote it is only
approximate -- it may well have been "blackest, glossiest"

I never use such words as drawers or underpants myself, preferring
"inexpressibles".
Perhaps I'm spending too much time in the 1830s newspapers.

GAT

On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 1:50 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>wrote:

> A CNN commentator yesterday assured us that a new or resurgent recession is
> neither "inevitable," "in the cards," nor "baked in the cake."  No OED.
>
> From 2005, e.g.  [
>
> http://www.safehaven.com/article/3101/kicks-just-keep-getting-harder-to-find
> ]:
> "Sadly, it will require at least one recession and possibly two. This will
> of course make it more difficult to balance the US government budget. But
> it
> will slow consumer spending. Those recessions are baked in the cake. They
> are going to happen. But they do not have to be 70's style deep
> recessions."
>
>
> Also, concerning "Weinergate," three CNN anchors (ca40 yoa) made fun of
> someone on another network who referred to the Weinergate underwear as
> "drawers."
>
> A. "When was the last time you heard underwear called 'drawers'?"
> B. "Years."
> C. "The 1930s, I think."
>
> The words they thought normal were "underwear" and "skivvies."
>
> "Underpants" was not mentioned.
>
> 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
>



--
George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ.
Pr., 1998, but nothing much since then.

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