"like a herd of turtles"

[Laurence Horn]

On Jun 10, 2014, at 8:28 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

> Obviously many did.  My SWAG, however, is that the phrase came first,
> possibly in the buttless version.
>
> IIRC, that version didn't make it into HDAS because first, the cites were
> newer, and second, back in the "B's" I was maybe overly concerned about
> whether a phrase was "slang" or merely "kind of informal."
>
> Since big birds do take off, I opted for the latter. (To my way of
> thinking, the suffixation of "-ass[ed]" makes any adjective or verb slang;
> but what do I know?)
>
> JL
>

So that makes you a Big Ass fan?

LH
>
> On Mon, Jun 9, 2014 at 11:27 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: "like a herd of turtles"
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> On Mon, Jun 9, 2014 at 8:56 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Wilson, see HDAS sv "big-assed," adj.
>>>
>>> Or don't bother. "Take off like a big-assed bird" was in print by 1945.
>>>
>>> Otherwise:
>>>
>>> 1947 _Nashua Telegraph_ (June 27) 10 (NewspArch): Watch 'em take off like
>>> a
>>> big bird,
>>>
>>
>> I did see. That's why I didn't bother to note my intuition that "take off
>> like a big-assed bird" probably didn't originate among ground troops. I
>> didn't think that the phrase was new in any interesting sense. It's only
>> that, like "herd of turtles," it's something that I would be unfamiliar
>> with, if not for my stint in the military.
>>
>> By 1945, did people still know that there was an actual "big-assed bird,"
>> the B-17, that could literally "take off"?
>> --
>> -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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