Show Out

[Wilson Gray]

On Fri, May 30, 2014 at 10:45 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

> FWIW, "show(ed) off" doesn't work here for me; "went wild/crazy" (or for
> the ballplayer "went nuts" or "blew his top") seem more like it.  (And for
> me a binky is only a pacifier, but that's just me.)


In the words of Stan Freberg, "That's right! That's right!" To do any of
those things is to "show out." IMO, the only commonality between "show out"
and "show off" is that both a person showing out and a person showing off
need at least one witness. And "show out" in the relevant sense is never
transitive.

Suppose that, for some reason, someone suddenly snatches a pacifier,
whether binky or not, out of a baby's mouth. The baby could respond to that
stimulus in a variety of ways. In my experience, pulling out the binky
revealed a baby showing off just one of the cutest, little, toothless,
baby-smiles that you could ever hope to see. OTOH, the baby might could've
just showed out, tantrum-ing its ass off.

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

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org