"Living Large"

[victor steinbok]

As it turned out, the 1120 raw turned out to be exactly 435 ghits between
1900 and 1975 and only 4 of them looked relevant (plus one more for "living
large-handedly"). I'm going to look at pre-1900, then come back and try a
few more variants.

VS-)

On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 9:29 PM, victor steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com>wrote:

>
> I was going to wait until I finished processing, but it's a fine sieve for
> very small needles in a very large stack, so I'll report intermediate
> finding.
>
>  http://goo.gl/jZqOM
> The torch of reason: or, Humanity's god. By Frederick Forrest Berry.
> Cincinnati: January 1912 [Copyright 1910, 1911, 1912]
> p. 5
>
> > But here was a man--one man--who would not be cut down to fit their pigmy
> > habitations. Here was a man living large and broad in spite of want and
> > oppression. Their narrow codes and commandments could not encompass him;
> for
> > he loved the music of the living spheres, and the limitations of human
> > brotherhood were bounded only by the limitations of the cosmic realm.
>
>
> A nice date, almost half-way between 1975 and 1834--and not BE dialect.
>
> http://goo.gl/qqzo3
> Table talk in the home. Ed. by Norman E. Richardson. American Institute of
> Child Life. 1913
> Subjects for Table Talk. p. 19
>
> > This adds a zest to appetite, and where people are living large, full
> lives
> > tends to make their reading and thinking more definite.
>
>
>
> Here's another, a bit more ambiguous (part of an NP).
>
> http://goo.gl/qu3ap
> Life and living. By Frederic Wood Jones. 1939
>
> > Moreover, they were all inclined towards living large and open-handed
> > lives. John Hunter, we all know, supported a household of over fifty
> persons
> > not counting his numerous pupils.
>
>
>
> This certainly doesn't explain the /origin/ of the expression, but it does
> explain some uses (living a large life).
>
>
> At the other end, this one is tagged 1974 by GB, but I am not even sure
> this
> is the right volume:
>
> http://goo.gl/8pf1H
>
> > For Rodgers was an aristocrat and he liked to see his young proteges
> living
> > largeso long as they did their work.
>
>
> I am listing it tentatively, but I suspect another GB screw-up.
>
> This represents the entire relevant selection from the first 300 of about
> 1000 raw ghits in GB. I only tried the direct pair, but there are,
> obviously, several variations.
>
> VS-)
>
> On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 9:06 PM, Garson O'Toole
> <adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com>wrote:
>
> >
> > 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-.]"
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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