[Ads-l] dear John letter

[Jonathan Lighter]

Not familiar to me either.

Was his name "John"?

JL

On Sat, Nov 15, 2014 at 12:47 AM, Herb Stahlke <hfwstahlke at gmail.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Herb Stahlke <hfwstahlke at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      dear John letter
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> This will have to be anecdotal since I didn't save the issue of the
> newspaper I read it in.  Sometime last week, our local eight-page rag had
> an article on an elderly--older than me--local resident and his military
> service in WWII.  The article noted that he was going to enlist before
> Pearl Harbor, but then he got his "Dear John" letter directing him to
> report for military service.  I haven't seen it used in this sense.  I did
> a Google search and didn't find any instances there either.
>
> Herb
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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