[Ads-l] "spirit" = "kidnapper", 1649; antedates OED2 a1675--
Wilson Gray
hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Wed Nov 26 00:10:04 UTC 2014
On Tue, Nov 25, 2014 at 6:33 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
> all the idle, lazie, simple people ... such as have professed idlenesse,
> and will rather
> beg then work
>
And their descendants survive and persist to this very day: the bone-lazy,
undeserving, welfare-cheating poor who will rather suck on the government
teat than work.
Ask any social and/or fiscal conservative.
So, that's where the expression, "to spirit ... away," comes from! It has
nothing to with "ro make ... vanish, as a spirit" or any such.
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
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