"razor tight" --- (blend on "Meet the Press")

[Dan Goncharoff]

Two thoughts:

When did razor-thin replace wafer-thin? Isn't it itself an (older) idiom
blend?

Doesn't razor-close come from direct comparison to the act of shaving? That
seems to make it different from the other razor- terms.

DanG


On Wed, Nov 7, 2012 at 1:09 AM, Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "razor tight" --- (blend on "Meet the Press")
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Tue, Nov 6, 2012 at 9:05 AM, Ben Zimmer
> <bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 4:42 AM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> On Oct 28, 2012, at 12:16 PM, "Cohen, Gerald Leonard" <gcohen at MST.EDU>
> wrote:
> >>
> >>> Today on "Meet the Press" David Gregory spoke of the polling in Ohio,
> with Obama
> >>> and Romney each at 49 percent. And he described it as "razor tight".
>  This is a blend
> >>> in regard to the margin: "extremely tight" +  "razor thin".
> >>
> >> reply on my blog:
> >>
> >> http://arnoldzwicky.wordpress.com/2012/10/29/razor-tight/
> >
> > Stephen Colbert had some fun with this on last night's "Colbert
> > Report" -- he had clips of four different political reporters
> > describing the race as "razor tight":
> >
> >
> http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/420764/november-05-2012/-razor-tight--presidential-election
>
> More on the expression in my Word Routes column:
>
> http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/not-so-razor-tight
>
> --bgz
>
> --
> Ben Zimmer
> http://benzimmer.com/
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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