the night is getting old

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Thu Nov 17 22:32:01 UTC 2011


On Thu, Nov 17, 2011 at 5:57 AM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com> wrote:
> It's transparently
> the opposite of the poetic, "the night is young".

So, you don't have _get old_ as an independent idiomatic expression
with no connection at all to _be young_? I.e., if someone said to me,

"The night is getting old"

I'd understand him to mean something like,

"This evening is played out. Let's go home."

OTOH, I might indeed reply,

"No, man. The night is still young, yet,"

hiply reffing the opening words of a sound by The Dells (*not* the
poetic line, though that's undoubtedly the source of the line of the
song. Like, who doesn't know the song, "The night is young / And
you're so beautiful"?): "Oh, oh, oh / Why do you have to go? / The
night is still young, yet," and earning R-E-S-P-E-C-T thereby.

Youneverknow.

--
-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

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