filthy

Victor Steinbok aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM
Fri Oct 26 06:16:46 UTC 2012


I've heard it too, but 1) not in baseball (I don't follow baseball,
generally, and only watched the last inning today); 2) it's not
documented. I'm not claiming primacy in any way, but the usage should be
on the record. As for (1), think of the emotionally positive use of
"filthy rich".

     VS-)

On 10/26/2012 12:34 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
> On Oct 26, 2012, at 12:00 AM, Alice Faber wrote:
>
>> On 10/25/12 11:14 PM, Victor Steinbok wrote:
>>> Commentary from the WS broadcast, on Romo's strike-out pitch: "That
>>> pitch is just filthy!" Yet another migration into positive territory.
>>
>> I've heard that usage for years.
> Same here.  I just tried googling "filthy slider" and got a bunch of results, including one describing Brad Lidge's out pitch, and that was ages ago--or at least six or seven years, before he fell off the map.  There are a few hits from google books, including one from Chad Harbach's _The Art of Fielding_ (discussed on an earlier thread, for that "not not not crazy" young woman).  I think the collocation with "filthy slider" is more common than, say, "filthy fastball" or "filthy two-seamer", although those pitches are well attested on google as well.
>
> LH
>
>> Unfortunately, Google Advanced Search
>> doesn't seem to have a way to limit a search to a date range, making it
>> hard to present actual evidence!

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