more new "old sayings"

[Wilson Gray]

On Sun, Sep 25, 2011 at 11:38 AM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> BONUS: "is is...is"
>
> Ron Susskind to Howard Kurtz: "The fact is is, Howie, is that..."
>
> Stammer? Or straw in the wind? (It didn't sound like a classic stammer, but
> that's only my opinion.)

All right! All right! You've caught us! What it is is, is that we
is-is speakers are really is-is-is speakers! We *try* to keep it
hidden But, sometimes, we slip up.

Sadly, "I kid you not!" to coin a phrase. "That's the truth, Ruth."

AFAIK, there are no quadruple-is speakers. AFIAC, even when done
consciously, as above, triple-is feels "good" and falls trippingly
from the tongue, but quadruple-is simply doesn't work. Of course, who
knows whether I use it unconsciously?

--
-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


Your HTML signature here

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