"On a serious tip, …"

[Wilson Gray]

On Mon, May 14, 2012 at 10:55 PM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Under false pretenses? Unreliable info? I never heard the other one, so
> can't say anything...

People used it so often in so many different contexts that I really
can't even give a serious WAG. OTOH, my intuition is that, because the
speaker used the intonation-pattern, "On a *serious* tip, …" i.e. with
contrastive stress, he probably was also familiar with "bullshit tip"
in some meaning such as you suggest and wanted - unconsciously - to
emphasize the distinction.

OTOH, some turns of phrase that may seem obscure, are perfectly clear,
in context. E.g.

_My man was steady getting up!_

"I saw him running away!"

You know that I saw this, since I'm using "my man." "Steady" tells you
that whatever was happening was proceeding apace. When you tell a
horse, which moves about afoot, to "get up," it moves away from its
former stead. Moving from X to some Y afoot and at speed  is "running
away."

It's obvious.;-)

--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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