impossible/impractical

[victor steinbok]

I accidentally appended the last post to the wrong thread--it should be
under Jon Lighter's thread on the subject.

VS-)

On Sun, Oct 2, 2011 at 4:36 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

>
> "theirs to lose" should bring in a lot of sports contexts (can't imagine
> how many involving this year's Red Sox and/or Braves:  theirs to lose, and
> they lost it) and political ones (to parties).
>
> LH
>
> On Oct 2, 2011, at 1:18 PM, Victor Steinbok wrote:
>
> > Keeping in mind the distinction, I just popped a quick search for "yours
> > to lose" and it goes back almost 130 years--at least. One citation near
> > the top is from 1918 that has "yours to win and yours to lose" and
> > another from 1873, "But you forget that the money is not yours to lose",
> > so, clearly, that's the same one that we've been looking at as "modern"
> > in the first instance, and the same as the 1916 one in the second. Most
> > are clustered in the 1890s. The earliest I see is from 1872:
> >
> > http://goo.gl/tFoSq
> >> This is folly, dear friend,' sad she, looking down ; ' I never las
> >> yours to lose.' '
> >
> > [Also a magazine version earlier in 1872]
> >
> > "His to lose" is even more frequent, but I just spotted a 1855 and 1832
> > citations. I am not going to bother with "mine to lose". All of these
> > "one's to lose" appear to be either in addition to or in opposition to
> > "one's to keep", which may well be older. Or not...
> >
> >    VS-)
>

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