Show Out

[Laurence Horn]

On May 31, 2014, at 4:03 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:

> 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.
>
>
So the "out" here is related to the one in "act(ing) out".

LH

>
>
> --
> -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

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