"Who knew?"

[Ben Zimmer]

On Sun, Apr 29, 2012 at 8:41 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>
> On Sun, Apr 29, 2012 at 8:35 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
> >
> > As supported by your association above, "Who knew?" has always struck me
> > as vaguely Jewish, or should I say Yinglish.  But maybe that's because it
> > seems roughly interchangeable with "Go know".  Both are often used
> > sarcastically or ironically, if that's a kosher use of that last adverb,
> > meaning 'of course everyone knew' or 'duh'.
>
> "Go know!"?
>
> Forerunner of "Go figure!" ?

That was the suggestion of some of William Safire's readers:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/25/magazine/25wwlnsafire.t.html

...in response to this column (which quoted me as saying that "go
figure" was preceded by "go figure it out" and "you go figure it"):

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/11/magazine/11wwlnsafire.t.html

--bgz


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

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