[Ads-l] "eat, breathe, and sleep"

[Ben Zimmer]

On Sun, Apr 12, 2015 at 2:02 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>
> All of these are obviously germane; but none exemplifies the modern trio of
> "eat, breathe, and sleep," and in none is the phrase itself followed by a
> direct object.
>
> My point is simply that the writers Ben cites would doubtless understand
> the 20th C. idiom, but would just as doubtless find it novel as well as
> grammatically unacceptable.
>
> Viz., how can a person "sleep" anything?   And most of the cited exx.
> involve people merely doing these things (which amount to "living")
> according to certain dictates rather than having somehow internalized them:
> "She eats, breathes, and sleeps Beauty!".
>
> Minor distinctions, but enough to suggest that the modern phrase suggests a
> more fanciful view of seeing the world.
>
> I was able to check only Newspaper Archive. Perhaps an earlier example may
> be found elsewhere.

I acknowledge this distinction in the Language Log post. The earliest
examples I give of clearly transitive usage come from the 1870s.

Julian Hawthorne, "A Feast of Blood," The Galaxy, Vol. 16, Issue 3,
Sep. 1873, p. 405/2
"The Schläger [a German fencing blade] is the life of the corps
system; the corps student talks, eats, sleeps, drinks Schläger."

"The Risks of the Stocking Trade," Chester (Pa.) Daily Times, Aug. 5,
1878, p. 1/3
My whole existence is one elongated hose. I eat, sleep, drink and
think stockings.

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002651.html

Many more variations on the theme, from the 1880s on, are listed here:

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002647.html

--bgz

-- 
Ben Zimmer
http://benzimmer.com/

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