Barney Rubble. ---was: dime

[Charles C Doyle]

Not necessarily related, but I recall (perhaps inaccurately) the the Valley-talking girls in the motion picture _Clueless_ (1995) referred to unattractive males generically as Barneys.

Charlie

________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Joel S. Berson [Berson at ATT.NET]
Sent: Friday, January 06, 2012 10:27 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU

At 1/5/2012 09:48 PM, Victor Steinbok wrote:
>You might remember it better than I do, but I thought of Barney as a
>simpleton, unaware of his surroundings, but it was always Fred who got
>in trouble. It was never high on my watch-list, so I may be missing the
>finer points.

If there were any finer points to miss, I missed them.  (The only one
may be the takeoff on Kramden and Norton.)  But Victor has the
characterizations right, I think.

While Fred initiated the trouble, Barney generally was sucked in.  So
"you're in Rubble trouble" may mean "you're in a mess that your
witlessness and gullibility got you into."

Joel

>     VS-)
>
>On 1/5/2012 9:05 PM, Cohen, Gerald Leonard wrote:
>>But "Barney Rubble" does seem to make sense.  He's the character in
>>the Flinststones cartoons, and from the little I remember of them,
>>Barney was always getting into trouble.  Or do I remember it wrong?
>>Gerald Cohen
>>
>>Original message from Victor Steinbok, Thu 1/5/2012 12:47 AM:
>><snip>
>>To me, this makes about as much sense as the following exchange in, I
>>believe, Oceans Eleven:
>>"You're in Barney."
>>"Say what?"
>>"Barney--Barney Rubble... You're in trouble. Get it?"
>>"No."
>>
>>Or something like that...

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