Hand to God

[ronbutters at AOL.COM]

Yeah, seems to me I heard "right hand to god" all my life when I lived in Cedar Rapids, Iowa (I moved to North Carolina in 1967). It sounds totally normal to me, though I do not use it myself, so whether I heard it in Durham for the past 44 years I would not have noticed. And besides, Duke University is a jumble of dialects, brought on only in part by having the greatest basketball program in the history of the planet.

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On Mar 11, 2011, at 9:41 AM, paul johnson <paulzjoh at MTNHOME.COM> wrote:

> paul johnson
>
> Since at least the mid fifties I've heard and used "Right hand to God"
> used in Chicago, haven't heard it much in the last 20 years, but now I
> live in Arkansas.
>
> On 3/11/2011 8:02 AM, Karl Hagen wrote:
>> Someone in an online forum asked about "hand to God" as an equivalent to
>> what she (and I) would say as "I swear to God" (i.e., a strong assertion
>> that something is true), asserting that she is suddenly hearing it a lot.
>>
>> I hesitate to say that this is new (recency illusion and all that) but
>> it's certainly new to me. I don't see it in DARE, and a quick search of
>> Google Books turns up a lot of 19th century examples of "lift your hand
>> to God" and the like but nothing early with the "I swear" sense.
>>
>> Is this an established regional term that is now spreading, or is it
>> really new?
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> --
>
>
>
> "And so another day fails to meet its promise and
> has spun out into procrasturbatory entropy."
>                       David Rakoff
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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