"like a herd of turtles"

[Jonathan Lighter]

No, but the B-17 had *four* big-ass fans.

Besides big tail surfaces.

Fun fact: I should say "has."  Several years ago I was minding my own
business in a western state when I heard the rumble of mighty engines. I
looked up and, behold, there was a B-17 flying right over me at about 3,000
feet. Nothing dropped out of it though.

It seems that the Commemorative Air Force was in town. (Formerly
"Confederate Air Force.")

JL

JL


On Tue, Jun 10, 2014 at 10:18 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "like a herd of turtles"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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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> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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>



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