Simile: like *substance* through a tin horn

[Jonathan Lighter]

I've never had any inkling that "tin horn" was a term for a funnel.  Why
would it be?

The theory I formulated decades ago on the basis of either nothing or a
single cite is that the original expression was "like spit through a tin
horn." At least it makes sense.

HDAS "shit" entries, enough to fill a book of their own, are somewhat
disorganized and so hard to access in their teeny digitized-image form that
I'm not even going to look.

JL

On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 3:23 PM, 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: Simile: like *substance* through a tin horn
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> The date on the issue is October 1, 1868--I punched "Send" before fixing
> the date tag.
>
>     VS-)
>
> On 4/4/2012 3:21 PM, Victor Steinbok wrote:
> > ...
> > http://goo.gl/FZ9oM
> > The Stamp-collector's magazine. 1868
> > Country Letter-Carrier. By Cuthbert Bede. pp. 146-8 [Google OCR text
> > has not been verified for errors]
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



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