"(one's) to lose"

[Jonathan Lighter]

OK, America's Historical Newspapers, which extends from 1690 to 1922, turns
up not one relevant exx. of "is ours/his/hers/mine/yours to lose."

There is a lone 1873 appearance of the phrase, but the similarity is
deceptive:

"For the battle is ours, to lose or win."  (Little Rock Daily Republican,
Dec. 10, 1873, p. 3)

Here the element "or win" is indispensable to the meaning. And there is no
suggestion that "we" are already virtually assured of success. Contrast:
"The battle is ours to lose."

JL

On Sun, Oct 2, 2011 at 8:50 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "(one's) to lose"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> That's not only possible, it's quite probable.
>
> However, most everything in GB that's out of copyright should be viewable
> without blank spots. So all the "X's to lose" before the mid '20s should, I
> think, appear.
>
> After that, there is the likelihood that many exx. are simply untraceable.
>
> But in the present case, there is an undeniable and amazing upswing in
> frequency after 1995. It's hard to believe that a significant number of
> earlier exx. were simply blotted out at random.
>
> I haven't searched the newspaper databases.  But it would be quite
> surprising to find that the phrase was any more frequent in newspapers
> before, say, 1990, than it was in the books and periodicals at GB.
>
> Presumably an exhaustive search would turn up a few more exx., but if there
> are only a few the natural conclusion must be that the phrase was
> extraordinarily rare.
>
> Try a search, for example, for a related phrase like "run any risk of
> losing."  I just did and found 748 exx, going back as far as 1811.
>
> JL
>
> On Sun, Oct 2, 2011 at 8:07 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
>
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> > Subject:      Re: "(one's) to lose"
> >
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > At 10/2/2011 03:48 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> > >But whatever the literal meaning of the seemingly straightforward phrase
> > "X
> > >is Y's to lose," that elementary string of words, which individually are
> > in
> > >the vocabulary of every three-year-old, seems not to exist in print in
> the
> > >English language before 1916. That means that effectively it had no
> > >existence. That situation apparently persisted for about another 80
> years.
> >
> > Jon, this paragraph led me to wonder -- is there any data on what
> > percentage of words written (in print, I mean, including pixels) in
> > every decade is accessible to full text search?  Could that be a
> > factor in not finding instances of use for several decades after
> > first appearance?
> >
> > Joel
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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