"What's that got to do with the price of pickles in Park Slope?"

[Arnold Zwicky]

On Oct 21, 2011, at 3:41 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:

> From Law & Order. Probably artificial.

what does "artificial" mean in this context?  this is either a playful variation on the "price of tea in China" expression or an instance of a Price of X in Y snowclone (developed from the tea-in-China version), and like many occurrences of playful variations and snowclones, it was intentionally devised by a user.  how does that make it "artificial"?  (what would a non-artificial example be like?)

arnold

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