slush-on-a-shingle, slop on a shingle, mud on a shingle, stuff-on-a-shingle

[Laurence Horn]

oops, sorry guys.  I hadn't read these messages before posting my hypothesis. (I did check the thread, but the name had changed along the way, so I didn't catch these postings.) Yes, I think "shingle-eating grin" is derived from shit on a shingle, or shit-on-shingles, and that the possibility of "shinola-eating grin" tends to confirm this.

LH


On Sep 26, 2011, at 9:53 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:

> On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 8:32 AM, Jonathan Lighter
> <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Ground beef on toast also received the appellation[, "shit on a shingle"].
>
> Yes. In the Army of a half-century ago, there was some kind of weird,
> non-dairy "creme" added to it, but the *beef*
> was definitely ground and not "chipped," W-everTF that may mean, WRT beef.
>
> FWIW, I found both S.O.S. and reconstituted dried eggs to be far
> more-palatable breakfast dishes than I would ever have expected,
> especially after taking into account [the fact that] the reconstituted
> eggs served in the '60's had been deconstituted in the '40's.
>
> IAC, that dish has long been the stuff of legend. People were already
> talking about it in the corridors of the recruitery before we had even
> been sworn in.
>
> --
> -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
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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