"(one's) to lose"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Joel asked me OT if I'd checked for "theirs to lose."

Yes.

Nothing whatsoever in America's Historical Newspapers.

GB has a number of pre-1980s occurrences of the simple string, but none
bears the current meaning.

A 1985 says, "It's theirs to lose or keep," but that's as close as they
come, AFAICT.

JL

On Sun, Oct 2, 2011 at 9:06 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"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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
> > >
> > > ------------------------------------------------------------
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> >
> >
> >
> > --
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>
>
>
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