'olly olly oxen free' in Congress

[Herb Stahlke]

I read that quote, and I didn't think it was clear that the congressman
knew the name of the game.  The writer did.  What caught my attention was
"a phrase in the game called..."  Taking "called" to modify "phrase"
requires a stretch of a parse.


On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 11:30 PM, Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at ix.netcom.com>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at IX.NETCOM.COM>
> Subject:      Re: 'olly olly oxen free' in Congress
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Jun 13, 2013, at 8:09 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:
>
> > On Jun 13, 2013, at 9:50 PM, Herb Stahlke wrote:
> >
> >> A Huff Post story at
> >>
> >>
> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/13/indefinite-detention-americans_n_3437923.html?ref=topbar
> >>
> >> quotes a congressman as follows:
> >>
> >> "There was a phrase in that game called 'olly olly oxen free' -- meant
> you
> >> could come out, you were safe, you no longer had to hide," Cotton
> argued.
> >>
> >> I've never heard "hide 'n' seek" called that, but the phrase is now in
> the
> >> Congressional Record.
> >>
> > Maybe he was blending two observations--
> >
> > (1) There was a phrase in a game, which went "olly olly oxen free" and
> that meant you could come out [etc.]
> > (2) The game in question was hide 'n' seek.
> >
> > Close enough for government work.
>
> It's a parsing issue. Here's the quote from the article:
>
> -----
> Rep. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), compared ending indefinite detention to giving
> someone a free pass in a game of hide-and-seek.
>
> "There was a phrase in that game called 'olly olly oxen free' -- meant you
> could come out, you were safe, you no longer had to hide," Cotton argued.
> -----
>
> -> a phrase called olly olly oxen free
>
> This is a little awkward, but is probably common enough in speech.
>
> Benjamin Barrett
> Seattle, WA
>
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