"(one's) to lose"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Those are interesting finds, Garson. But none of them seem to carry the
evaluative idea of being assured of something with the threat of losing it
through mismanagement or the like.

More to the point, perhaps, none (with the possible exception of 1913) are
in the context  of a competition, and certainly none are related to politics
or a sporting event.

JL

On Sun, Oct 2, 2011 at 6:51 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: "(one's) to lose"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I did not see some of the relevant messages on this topic from Victor
> and LH because I had not read the thread with the title
> "impossible/impractical". I thought that thread was not related to
> this topic. Sorry.
>
> On Sun, Oct 2, 2011 at 6:37 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: "(one's) to lose"
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > Here are some raw Google Books matches for "ours to lose" and "theirs
> > to lose". I may not understand the figure of speech being sought.
> >
>
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