[Ads-l] dear John letter

[Laurence Horn]

And then there were those scary letters you got from your girlfriend that began "Greetings!"

LH
 

On Nov 15, 2014, at 8:10 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

> 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

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