New words from Sleepy Hollow

[Jonathan Lighter]

Perhaps you missed the "Who cares?" in line one.  So generous of you to
assume that all readers of this thread, including agents of the OED, are as
steeped in knowledge as yourself and don't need to build a more powerful
vocabulary!

This week, George Washington had himself resurrected by Catholic priests
(just for a few days) so he could lead Ich and Ab in the 21st century to a
map buried with him showing how to reach Purgatory from Sleepy Hollow.
 (It's within walking distance.) Won't bore you with the details, but in
the final scene (a real cliffhanger!), a magickally resurrected dude, a
witch sprung from Purg by a lady cop, *and* the Fully Headed Second
Horseman of the Apocalypse were yelling at each other about Coming
Destruction - and they're all  family!  Tune in This Fall to sort it out..

Gotta love that Post-Mod By-God Washington Irving.

The only linguistically interesting moment - and the sole point of this
note - was, "Not to bury the lead, but [Moloch's stirring up more shit]!"

In other words, (ironically) "Not to beat around the bush."  The once
arcane journalistic dictum "Never bury your lead" may be poised to spread
to the masses. But Victor is surely ahead of the curve on that one too.

JL


On Tue, Jan 21, 2014 at 6:12 PM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: New words from Sleepy Hollow
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Familiar with timesuck, but it's nothing compared to the "A-game" and
> "besties". I hope you were joking about these being new. "Besties" might
> have been teen slang a decade ago--or maybe two. But "A-game" sounds
> completely familiar for much longer than that and more associated with
> adults.
>
>      VS-)
>
> On 1/20/2014 8:13 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> > ...Last week:
> >
> > "A boondoggle is an exercise in futility, a timesuck, a fool's errand."
> >
> > (So "timesuck" is now thought to be more familiar than "boondoggle."
> > 400,000 raw Google hits.)
> >
> > "We weren't exactly besties back then." (Best friends. 2,000,000 raw
> > Googlits.)
> >
> > "We need your A-game!"  (Your best and most comprehensive effort [to beat
> > Moloch]. Maybe a hundred thou RG's: hard to search for.)
>
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