Fun with phrases

[Garson O'Toole]

LH wrote:
> Or as Safire memorably put it (when discussing how you can detect obscenity), "It's not the teat, it's the tumidity".

At Harvard in 1974 they made it half way to that joke.

Date: 1974 December 12
Periodical: The Harvard Crimson
Title: Antiwar Attics: Lysistrata by Aristophanes directed by Sam
Guckenheimer tonight, tomorrow and Saturday at 8:30 p.m. at Dunster
House
Author: Paul K. Rowe
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1974/12/12/antiwar-attics-pbnbone-of-the-pleasures/

And jokes the cast occasionally added--like one Athenian's wife
disdainful "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn"--hit the spot. When
one of the women asks one of the men if it isn't terribly hot outside,
he answers, "It's not the heat, it's the tumidity." Not every laugh is
as literate as that, but most of them will do.

Garson

> On Jan 25, 2012, at 6:56 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>
>> "It isn't the heat. It's the humidity."
>>
>> No 19th C. GB or NewspArch hits.
>>
>> 1917 ad for _Vanity Fair_ magazine in _House & Garden_ [GB snippet:
>> typeface and ref. to Plattsburg army training camp make it look
>> legit]:   Let other people restate the safe-and-sane truths that
>> dinner is their best meal; that if you saw that sunset in a painting
>> you wouldn't believe it; and that it isn't the heat, it's the
>> humidity.
>>
>> 1920 _Miami Herald_ (June 18) [Am. Hist. Newsp.] 6: ...and we swear
>> it; we/ Have never had to say, "It's not/ The heat. It's the
>> humidity."
>>
>> (Most recent OED "humidity" is 1871.)
>>
>> JL
>>
>> On Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 10:05 AM, Jonathan Lighter
>> <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
>>> Subject:      Re: Fun with phrases
>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> "Who _are_ you? (I mean) _really_?"
>>>
>>> Fantasy/thriller cliche'.
>>>
>>> 1950  Ray Bradbury _The Martian Chronicles_ (Garden City, N.Y.:
>>> Doubleday) 153:    Who are you, _really_? You can't be Tom, but you
>>> are _someone_. Who?
>>>
>>> JL
>>>
>>> On Mon, Dec 5, 2011 at 8:01 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>>>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>>> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
>>>> Subject:      Re: Fun with phrases
>>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>
>>>> "rewriting the rules"
>>>>
>>>> E.g.: "Founder of avant-rock band Pere Ubu, singer David Thomas has
>>>> been rewriting the rules of popular music for more than twenty-eigh

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