"Living Large"

[Jonathan Lighter]

And the 1834 ex. above from William Gilmore Simms, the South Carolina
novelist, is the only
pre-Don Pendleton occurence I have seen.

If memory serves, I looked for an occurrence of the phrase in the earliest
Executioner novels (1969+) without success until 1975.

I first started hearing it in conversation around 1990, IIRC.

JL

On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 9:06 PM, Garson O'Toole
<adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Garson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "Living Large"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Jonathan Lighter's invaluable reference Random House Historical
> Dictionary of American Slang has "live large" under the entry for
> "large" on page 399 of volume 2. The first cite is the one in 1975
> given in a previous message. JL indicates the phrase was a "motto of
> The Executioner, crime-fighting hero of a popular action-adventure
> series by Don Pendleton, published [1969-.]"
>
> On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 8:51 PM, Garson O'Toole
> <adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Garson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
> > Subject:      Re: "Living Large"
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > Wilson Gray wrote:
> >> I'm persuaded. Certainly, the phrase is *much* older than 1991. But is
> >> the question solely WRT to the documented, oldest-known occurrence of
> >> the phrase or WRT its more-recent revival as something that's "fresh"?
> >> I, perhaps in error, assumed the latter.
> >
> > There is a large gap in time from 1834 to 1975 to reach the second
> > cite given in the OED.
> >
> > 1975    D. Pendleton St. Louis Showdown 32   If that's what you call
> > living large, Sergeant Bolan, then it's been nothing but small for me.
> >
> > Garson
> >
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