dime

[Laurence Horn]

One more, reprising a construction we've been discussing:  Mike Francesa, on his syndicated TV/Radio "Football Sunday" analysis show this morning, tells us that "The Niners are worthy of respect. If you had watched them this year and hadn't gone to sleep on them, especially in December, you saw that this team was legitimate".

I noticed the "dime" references on ESPN, and while Victor doesn't speculate, my assumption is that while they do indeed refer to "dropping a dime", (as opposed to say the dime that someone or something can stop on), they differ from the "drop a dime on" that alludes to turning someone (e.g. a confederate) in to the authorities, as we've discussed earlier.  In this football usage, the dime represents a very small object that can (or can't) be dropped into a very tight place (thrown accurately to a receiver closely covered).  But it is probably is related to the basketball "assist" sense Victor mentions as well.

Interesting about the generalization of "Tebowing", which I hadn't heard but isn't too surprising.  As for "the show" = 'the major leagues' as in Victor's sense 1) below, I think its trajectory received a big boost at the time from the movie _Bull Durham_.

LH

On Jan 15, 2012, at 1:52 AM, Victor Steinbok wrote:

> A couple more instances from ESPN post-game coverage after SF-NO playoff
> game.
>
>> Talk about a dime!
>
> This was a comment by Marcellus Wiley about one of New Orleans
> touchdowns. A few minutes later he used similar language to describe a
> San Francisco touchdown.
>
> But ESPN was not done yet. Late post-game NFL Primetime used the footage
> for the winning SF touchdown as the "Primetime Dime" feature. I have no
> idea if this is a regular feature or just a special category for today
> (but it had its own special logo).
>
> In an entirely different context, in Season 5 Episode 7 of Psych, the
> word "dime" appears several times.
>> 00:17:17
>> Shawn: Yeah, man, he's right.
>> I ain't trying to die.
>>
>> Craig (Chi McBride): Look, man, you ain't
>> the only one with a dime piece
> ...
>> 00:30:15
>> Juliet: Hey, guys, any new leads?
>>
>> Craig: How you feel, mama?
>>
>> Shawn: Dude...Really?
>>
>> Craig: She a dime piece.
>>
>> Shawn: Dime piece?
>> ?: What is that,
>> like an invisible stopwatch
>> ?: or a chocolate coin?
>>
>> Juliet: It's a hot woman.
>> A ten.
>> And thank you.
>>
>> Craig: Oh, yeah.
>>
>> ?: Wow
>>
>> Craig: You ain't the only one
>> with a dime piece
>> waiting for him out there.
>>
>> ?: Dime piece.
>> Craig: Northcutt has a girlfriend.
>
> I don't have the recording, so I was reconstructing some of the dialog
> from memory and some from available soundtrack pieces (Hence some lines
> attributed to "?").
>
> A couple more football-related comments.
>
> On overnight SportsCenter (1 am ET):
>
> "People of San Francisco have been Tebowing for years waiting for Alex
> Smith to emerge."
>
> This seems to be just a straight substitute for "praying" rather than an
> association with the specific Tebowing gesture.
>
> "The Show", "the Big Show", "going to the Big Show" are references to 1)
> major leagues (baseball, hockey or something else) or 2) the playoffs or
> some sort of a championship game (e.g., the World Series, the Superbowl,
> the All-Star Game, etc.). I am not sure if any of the phrases are used
> in the UK, although I've heard the reference in a couple of soccer
> (football) broadcasts in reference to some players from lower-level
> leagues being transferred to top-tier teams (e.g., from a Championship
> team to a Premiership team in England). But in all cases it was in US
> broadcasts of English games, so I'm not sure of the provenance of the
> phrasing. Whatever the case, "the Bigs" is in the OED, but the variants
> on "The Show" are not (show n.1 15.b. refers to military battles or
> campaigns--both for The Show and The Big Show).
>
> Final comment: "showboating" is listed in the OED as a derivative under
> "showboater", but not under "showboat v.". That makes no sense.
>
>    VS-)
>
> On 1/5/2012 1:47 AM, Victor Steinbok wrote:
>> I believe this has been mentioned before, but adding another instance
>> can't hurt.
>>
>> "[Ricky] Rubio had eight dimes in the first half." This came from ESPN
>> Sportscenter, where it could only mean dime==assist (in a basketball
>> game). (As in "drop a dime", several layers removed.) ...
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org