What on Earth??

[Tom Zurinskas]

>"Between a duck?"

Today in the news a lady said she held her grandson during a fire "between her until the firemen came" (or something like that).  Between her?   (Then she dropped the child out the 3rd floor window where a fireman caught him.)

Between you I don't think this is quite right.


Tom Zurinskas, Conn 20 yrs, Tenn 3, NJ 33, now Fl 9.
See how English spelling links to sounds at http://justpaste.it/ayk



>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject: Re: What on Earth??
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> --What's the difference between a duck?
> --The higher the fewer.
>
> Mad Magazine, maybe?
>
> As I recall, the Groucho "Why a duck?" was somehow connected with "viaduct". But I'm not sure about the provenance of the above riddle, or the classic "No soap, radio" Dan mentions, which I seem to recall somehow involved two penguins in the bathtub and may have constituted a response to "Please pass the soap."
>
> LH
>
> On Oct 17, 2011, at 9:03 PM, Dan Goncharoff wrote:
>
> > No soap, radio.
> > DanG
> >
> >
> >
> > On Mon, Oct 17, 2011 at 3:14 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> >> Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> >> Poster: Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> >> Subject: Re: What on Earth??
> >> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>
> >> On Mon, Oct 17, 2011 at 2:55 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> >>> Reminds me of those old papers by Georgia Green and/or Jerry Morgan that begin with a sentence that sounds like word salad out of context
> >>
> >> That reminds me of something that I heard recited by white
> >> barracksmates when I was at the Army Language School, back in '60. It
> >> went something like;
> >>
> >> Q. "Why a duck?'
> >> A. "Because the moon."
> >>
> >> There was a string of such nonsensical question/answer pairs. IIRC,
> >> this - or something like it - was said to have originated with
> >> Groucho.
> >>
> >> A quick check with W:pedia shows this to be fact. So, perhaps,
> >> everybody but me is more than familiar with this bit. As was the case
> >> with a Cosby Show spinoff, "it's a different world."
> >>
> >> --
> >> -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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> >>
> >
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