[Ads-l] Still more Facebook

[Jonathan Lighter]

>From zee files:

1954 William G. Smith _South Street_ (N.Y.: Farrar, Straus) 279: "What eees
a sleeve job?" asked Susette. "That, cherie, is the whole question."

JL




On Mon, Aug 10, 2015 at 9:46 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Still more Facebook
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Mon, Aug 10, 2015 at 11:20 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
> wrote:
>
> > I've already started stopping.
>
>
> In fact,
>
> "_Nope. I've *already* started stopping_ [talking about and mentioning
> that]."
>
> is what caught my attention. It tells you that the information that answers
> the question    became unavailable before you could acquire the knowledge
> that there was a question.
>
> I.e. this is a kind of shaggy-doggish story thing, reminiscent of "The
> Sleeve-Job," in which the answer to the question, "What is a sleeve-job?,"
> becomes unanswerable at exactly the point at which it would have been
> answered, had not what happened happened..
>
> Guess what I'm going to stop talking about and mentioning.
> What?
> Too late. I've already started stopping and I can't stop.
>
>
> --
> -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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> 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."

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