fun with phrases

[Jonathan Lighter]

GB coughs up a lot of exx. of "new kid in town" beginning around 1917.

AFAICT, all are either literal or at least perfectly neutral. None
have "Watch/Look out!"

Same for "new boy in town," which doesn't seem to be used fig. very often.

JL

On Mon, Oct 24, 2011 at 7:56 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
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> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: fun with phrases
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>
> Is "new kid (new boy) in town" a precursor?  (well before the eponymous Eagles song, or the Stones' "New Guy in Town")
>
> LH
>
> On Oct 24, 2011, at 6:36 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>
>> Great find.
>>
>> What's interesting is that until American families became more mobile
>> than ever, in the 20th C., any "new kid on the block" would usually be
>> an unthreatening new-born - hardly cause for a kid-wide (or cop-wide)
>> alert. Assuming you even where there were "blocks."
>>
>> The "new kid on the block" in the proverb is clearly an outsider
>> trying to muscle in - successfully, it would appear, so far.
>>
>> The earliest I find in NewspArch (though w/o "Look/watch out!":
>>
>> 1957  INS in _Lebanon [Pa.] Daily News_ (Dec. 14) 8: Bradley and St.
>> Louis may be the powers of the Missouri Valley again this year, but
>> they'll have to contend with a tough new kid on the block, Cincinnati.
>>
>> Most fig. refs.  to a "new kid on the block" in NewspArch, however,
>> suggest instead - through the 1960s - that the new kid is unsure of
>> himself, eager to be liked, and is generally picked on by bullies and
>> (what were then considered to be) "gangs."
>>
>> Expectations (or urban experiences) seem to have changed considerably
>> after the '60s.
>>
>> JL
>>
>> On Mon, Oct 24, 2011 at 6:09 PM, Garson O'Toole
>> <adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:
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>>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>> Poster:       Garson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
>>> Subject:      Re: fun with phrases
>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>>>>
>>>> "Look out X! There's a new Y on the block!"
>>>>
>>>> 2,000,000 raw Google hits.  I just heard a Discovery Channel  show
>>>> from 2005 with  lines something like, "Look out Roswell [?]! There's a
>>>> new alien on the block!"
>>>>
>>>> 1978 _Flying_ (June) 28:  Look out, Goodyear, there's a new blimp on
>>>> the block. A West German company, Westdeutsch Luftwerbung, has moved
>>>> its 180-foot-long flying machine to the United States.
>>>>
>>>> My own recollection of the phrase doesn't go nearly that far back, but
>>>> I have encountered it a number of times in advertising contexts.  The
>>>> 1978 ex. sounds as though it may be playing off an already familiar
>>>> construction.
>>>
>>> Here is a close variant with "watch out" instead of "look out". The
>>> words appear in a multi-part headline.
>>>
>>> Cite: 1973 August 5, Springfield Union, Section Leisure Time, Page
>>> LT-1, [GNB Page 77], Springfield, Massachusetts. (GenealogyBank)
>>>
>>> 'NEW KID ON BLOCK'
>>> Watch Out Barbara Walters!
>>> Smith Graduate Sally Quinn On the Way to Challenge You
>>> by John Carmody
>>> Special to The Republican
>>>
>>> Garson
>>>
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>>
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