let it drag

[Laurence Horn]

At 7:30 PM -0400 5/8/11, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>So..."let the bottom of the race car drag!" means what then?  Sounds like a
>prescription for failure.
>
>JL

Better than letting the top side drag, or the left side.

Speaking of perhaps not getting the whole story, I had assigned
"albatross" as one of the words for which my Words students were
supposed to provide histories (etymology, lexical and phonological
shifts, semantic changes).  One of them correctly went through the
appropriate stages (Arabic al-gattuz, Spanish, Portuguese "alcatraz",
influence from Latin "albus", etc.) and then touched on the
metaphorical extension from the seabird itself to a good luck symbol
to a token of ill-fortune all of which can be attributed to
'Coleridge's 1936 novel "Rime of the Ancient Mariner".'  Now getting
the date slightly (well, 138 years) off may be attributable to Google
Books, but calling the Rime a "novel" seems to be another instance of
the generalized meaning we've been contemplating (as a potential
SOTA).

LH

>On Sun, May 8, 2011 at 7:13 PM, Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>  -----------------------
>>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>  Poster:       Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at GMAIL.COM>
>>  Subject:      Re: let it drag
>>
>>
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>  Probably the bottom of the race car itself.
>>  DanG
>>
>>  On Sat, May 7, 2011 at 12:09 PM, Jonathan Lighter
>>  <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>   > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>  -----------------------
>>  > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>  > Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
>>  > Subject:      let it drag
>>  >
>>
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>  >
>>  > From a TV commercial for NASCAR:
>>  >
>>  > "No holds barred - and let the rough side drag!!"
>>  >
>>  > Jesse Winchester released his LP _Let the Rough Side Drag_ in 1976, as if
>>  > that explains anything.
>>  >
>>  > What rough side?
>>  >
>>  > JL
>>  > --
>>  > "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
>>  truth."
>>  >
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>
>
>--
>"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
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