fun with phrases

Fri Sep 30 19:43:22 UTC 2011

I.

This one is surprising:

"But this/that was only/just the beginning."

I'm interested in the phrase as a dramatic, unelaborated transitional
statement. History Channel narrators use it frequently, as do the
journalists at Fox and CNN.

GB turns up several exx. during the (mostly later) 19th C., but many are
just duplications of a single use by Kipling.

Once again, there's an explosion,  perhaps pioneered in advertising, after
ca1920.

If it was as common in conversation in, say, 1825, as one would suspect, why
were writers in Britain and America so reluctant to use it?  Because it was
felt to be, God forbid, a sentence fragment?  But its 19th C. rarity is
still a little curious.

II.

"On the comeback trail."

OED has this kind of "comeback" from 1908, but no "comeback trail."

1921 Dean Snyder in _Ogden Standard-Examiner_ (Last Edition) (Feb. 5) 6
[Newspaper Archive]: "It will be different this time." This is the
philosophy which [Jess] Willard has worked out after a year and a half in
meditation. He has sought the comeback trail among the Kansas sunflowers.

1921 Jack Lawrence in _New York Tribune_ (Nov. 8) 15 [Chronicling America]:
Pete Herman, who twice has held and lost the bantamweight championship of
the world, is taking the old Come-Back Trail which so often leads to
failure. ...[T]he Come-Back Trail is smeared with the shadows of defeat and
strewn with the forms of ancient boxers who couldn't make the grade.

1925 _Oakland Tribune_ (Apr. 27) [unp.] [NewspaperArchive]: There is no
steeper trail, perhaps, than the come-back trail -- that climb that must be
made by erring ones who would re-establish themselves in the eyes of the
world.

(There's even a cartoon illustration of the presumably unfamiliar phrase:  a
chap with a receding hairline tries to scale a sheer cliff in wingtips).

The two databases find only two or three other exx. before 1926.  After
that, it's on sports pages everywhere.

One wonders whether the "comeback trail" was a term first used by hikers and
such for the "return trail."

JL

On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 2:29 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: fun with phrases
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Sep 27, 2011, at 4:42 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>
> > "That special someone."
> >
> > Nothing before a song title in 1945, "You're that Special Someone."
>  Hardly
> > anything till the '50s, a moderate frequency of use in the '60s, then an
> > explosion begins in  the '70s.
> >
> > JL
>
> Strangely, I kept thinking I was familiar with "special someone" from a
> song, but it wasn't this one, and it turned out after extensive googling
> that it wasn't "special someone" at all I was recalling, but "You are my
> special angel" from the early 60's.  I don't remember the 1945 song, even
> from listening to oldies stations in the 50's.
>
> LH
> >
> > On Tue, Sep 27, 2011 at 11:17 AM, Jonathan Lighter
> > <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>wrote:
> >
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> >> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> >> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> >> Subject:      Re: fun with phrases
> >>
> >>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>
> >> A clear 1977, then really nothing till the mid-eighties. Then plenty.
> >>
> >> "It isn't who I am" shows up in '73, though not quite in the current
> sense.
> >> (It seems to mean, "That's not the sort of person I am," which is pretty
> >> close to current usage, though I think currently it tends also to mean,
> "It
> >> isn't the style or thing I prefer."
> >>
> >> There's also a '42 snippet, which, if correctly dated, easily admits a
> >> different interpretation, namely,  "It isn't who *I* am that counts;
> it's
> >> who *you* are."
> >>
> >> "That's who I am" presents too daunting a search.
> >>
> >> "That's not who I am" also shows a good one in 1973.
> >>
> >> JL
> >>
> >> On Tue, Sep 27, 2011 at 10:41 AM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com
> >>> wrote:
> >>
> >>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> >>> -----------------------
> >>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> >>> Poster:       Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> >>> Subject:      Re: fun with phrases
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>>
> >>> What about the flip-side: "It's not who I am"?
> >>>
> >>>    VS-)
> >>>
> >>> On 9/27/2011 9:02 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> >>>> "It's part of who I am."
> >>>>
> >>>> Nothin' nowhere before a likely 1975 in GB, with some in the '80s.
> >>>>
> >>>> Many in the '90s, more than 500 since 2000.
> >>>>
> >>>> JL
> >>>
> >>> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
> truth."
> >>
> >> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
> truth."
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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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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