Again recalling my lost youth,

[Jonathan Lighter]

No, a "false-face" didn't have to be worn specifically on or for Halloween,
but it did have to cover the entire face. (Commercial masks for the whole
head were unknown in my childhood.)

JL


On Fri, Apr 4, 2014 at 11:19 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Again recalling my lost youth,
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Fri, Apr 4, 2014 at 9:18 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com
> >wrote:
>
> > stress on "false"
> >
>
> Exactly!
>
> Maybe the term was once the usual word, since it's probably not sheer
> coincidence that my East Texas gram and your NYC gram of similar age, would
> both use this as their usual word, and it was fairly recently - I've never
> really stopped using "false face"; being childless, I've had no reason to
> update - replaced by the specific "Hallowe'en mask." I have a vague memory
> that a false face wasn't *necessarily* a Hallowe'en mask. The relevant
> memory is being blocked by the clear memory of the funny-book hero, The
> Face, whose false-face-looking face, IIRC, was the consequence of an injury
> suffered in combat, During The War.
>
> Correcting a pswaydo-memory that I once posted: It was not Doctor Mid-Nite,
> but Mister Terrific, whose costume bore an escutcheon on the chest with the
> motto, "Turn-About Is Fair Play." Too bad, since "turn-about" goes quite
> well with the concept of a blind man who can see better in the dark than
> the sighted can see in the light.
>
> And, while looking for something else entirely, I was unpleasantly
> surprised to come upon irrefutable documentation that strings of the type,
>
> "... A, B, and C, the latter, _C_, ..."
>
> can be dated to at least 1905, about eighty years earlier than I would have
> guessed.
>
> Youneverknow.
>
> --
> -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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>



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