"Nice find!"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Am more familiar with the antonymous "kidding on the square":  sounds like
kidding but to the discerning interlocutor it ain't.

JL


On Thu, Jul 31, 2014 at 5:52 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "Nice find!"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Thu, Jul 31, 2014 at 5:11 PM, Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at ix.netcom.com>
> wrote:
>
> > I don't know about "on the sly," either. I would probably use it though
> > who knows about young people...?
>
>
> The expression was "*kidding* on the sly." IIRC, "I am / I was just kidding
> on the sly" meant something along the lines of "I may sound / may have
> sounded serious, but I am / I was just being facetious. Or not. The choice
> is yours. *You* decide."  It was very ambiguous, hence kinda
> passive-aggressive.
>
> Youneverknew.
>
> --
> -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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-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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