[Ads-l] "Noun adjective."

[Jonathan Lighter]

I recall the not-quite parallel "felony stupid" from cop stories of some
twenty-five  years ago.

It means 'amazingly stupid.'

JL

On Sun, Nov 9, 2014 at 11:39 AM, Gordon, Matthew J. <GordonMJ at missouri.edu>
wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Gordon, Matthew J." <GordonMJ at MISSOURI.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "Noun adjective."
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> And Madness's mum was so "house-proud" back in 1982. OED has that back to
> 1=
> 822.
>
> Matt
> ________________________________________
> From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Neal
> W=
> hitman [nwhitman at AMERITECH.NET]
> Sent: Sunday, November 09, 2014 10:30 AM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: "Noun adjective."
>
> And Houston TX was "Houston proud" back in the late 1980s.
>
> Neal
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> > On Nov 9, 2014, at 11:14 AM, Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> >
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> ------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM>
> > Subject:      Re: "Noun adjective."
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------=
> ------
> >
> >> On Sun, Nov 9, 2014 at 10:15 AM, Ben Yagoda wrote:
> >>
> >> From a 10/31 news report:  "Five football players from California
> Univer=
> sity
> >> of Pennsylvania were arrested and suspended from the school after police
> >> say they beat and stomped a man outside an off-campus restaurant, then
> f=
> led
> >> yelling 'Football strong!'
> >>
> >> That brought to mind the slogan the city of Boston adopted after the
> Mar=
> athon
> >> bombing of 2013: "Boston strong."
> >>
> >> I also recently learned that the city of Barrett, Pennsylvania, the
> cent=
> er
> >> of a recent manhunt for an armed fugitive, has taken the motto "Barrett
> =
> Proud."
> >>
> >> All this made me wonder if anyone on this list has any insights to the
> o=
> rigin,
> >> or grammar, of this construction. The most prominent early use I'm aware
> >> of is the slogan "Built Ford Tough," which has been around at least
> sinc=
> e
> >> 1986. (
> http://books.google.com/books?id=3D_Z0iAQAAMAAJ&q=3D%22Ford+tough=
> %22)
> >
> > I wrote about "Boston strong" and its predecessors for the Boston
> > Globe and in a followup Word Routes column for Vocabulary.com:
> >
> > http://b.globe.com/strongbz
> > http://www.vocabulary.com/articles/wordroutes/an-army-of-strong-slogans/
> >
> > As I mention in the Word Routes column, "Built Ford Tough" actually
> > goes back to 1976.
> >
> > http://books.google.com/books?id=3D3uEDAAAAMBAJ&pg=3DPA26
> >
> > On the grammar of "N strong", see these Language Log posts on "Army
> > strong" (which I discuss in the Globe column):
> >
> > http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003903.html
> > http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003906.html
> >
> > --bgz
> >
> > --
> > Ben Zimmer
> > http://benzimmer.com/
> >
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