football

[Ben Zimmer]

On Sun, Sep 4, 2011 at 6:20 PM, victor steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 2. "sooner than later":
>
> There was this story breaking about Oklahoma zeroing in on leaving the Big
> > 12 for the Pac-12, and the Sooners might be doing it sooner than later.

Neal on Literal-Minded:

http://literalminded.wordpress.com/2008/04/22/lets-be-safe-than-sorry/

>  5. "cupcake" not in OED:
>
> "We were wrong for thinking coming in that they might be a cupcake team and
> > they really ran it down our throat the first half," he said.>
>
> Well, "cup-cake" in the literal sense is in the OED, but no figurative
> assignment is given.

Me on Language Log (mostly about the verb form):

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002987.html

(Both of the above posts reference ADS-L discussions.)

--bgz

--
Ben Zimmer
http://benzimmer.com/

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