Doctor Livingstone, I presume

Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM
Mon May 2 22:22:28 UTC 2011


By coincidence, I made a mental note within the past week of a TV
documentary (perhaps it was on PBS but I can't tell you what it was about at
this point) (Note to self: no more mental notes to self) in which Dr.
Livingstone's name was pronounced by the well educated and briefed narrator
as "Dr. Living Stone."

That didn't happen, by cracky, in my day!

JL
On Mon, May 2, 2011 at 6:07 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Doctor Livingstone, I presume
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Back in radio days, in an episode of the The Jack Benny Show, when his
> wife was asked who her father was, she replied,
>
> "Dr. Livingston, I presume."
>
>
> For those so young as to be unaware that Jack Benny was ever on the
> radio, his wife's (stage-)name was "Mary Livingston."
>
> --
> -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
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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