nail that Jell-O

[Jonathan Lighter]

With a Jell-O nail, you can do it: what they *won't* tell you.

JL

On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 11:19 AM, Ben Zimmer
<bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: nail that Jell-O
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 11:11 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> >
> > There was a mention of this phrase - indirectly - in 2003.  I first heard
> > these precise words (emphasis by ed.) during the 1992 Presidential
> campaign.
> >
> > "Getting Sarah to meetings and events was _like nailing Jell-O to a
> tree_."
> >
> > http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110523/ap_on_re_us/us_palin_book
> >
> > Slippery. Elusive. Hard to pin down.
>
> Both the "jelly" and "Jell-O" variants were discussed by William
> Safire back in April 1986:
>
> ---
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/1986/04/06/magazine/on-language-canute-s-bum-rap.html
> More to the point of the tree or wall dribbling a gelatinous
> substance, who was the coiner of that simile about nailing Jell-O?
> Some Irregulars pointed to the 1981 book ''Nailing Jelly to a Tree,''
> by Jerry Willis and William Danley Jr., about the nebulous world of
> computer software. Another found it in a 1976 Federal court opinion by
> a judge having difficulty defining ''public figure'' in a libel
> action.
> The earliest use, at least until an earlier one is found, was
> submitted by Prof. Joe E. Decker of the University of Tampa: ''You
> could no more make an agreement with them,'' wrote Theodore Roosevelt
> in 1915, describing his troubles with the Colombian Government leaders
> during negotiations for rights in the Panama Canal Zone, ''than you
> could nail currant jelly to a wall - and the failure to nail currant
> jelly to a wall is not due to the nail; it is due to the currant
> jelly.''
> ---
>
> --bgz
>
> --
> Ben Zimmer
> http://benzimmer.com/
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



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