Fun with phrases

[Laurence Horn]

On Jan 25, 2012, at 8:05 PM, Garson O'Toole wrote:

> 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

Let's see if Safire's improvement on that line can be documented…
Ah, here it is, more recent than I'd remembered, in his "Ode on a G-String" column:
http://www.nytimes.com/1991/08/04/magazine/on-language-ode-on-a-g-string.html
And I'd misremembered his original, which was "It ain't the teat, it's the tumidity".  

Curiously, one of the other "tumidity" hits that came up in a search at the Times site was a 1927 article about a declaration by Joseph P. Tumulty (not "Tumidity") that the Democrats would have a tougher time defeating Frank Lowden than Calvin Coolidge in the 1928 election.  Guess we'll never know.  But there's another yet 
article in which Tumulty > Tumidity thanks presumably to OCR rather than any particular scandal of the era.

LH
> 
>> 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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