[Ads-l] "stepped foot on" (that flight)

[Jonathan Lighter]

I'm certain that my students occasionally wrote or said this (i.e., I met
with it two or three times, maybe more) twenty-five years ago or
thereabouts.

JL

On Thu, Aug 20, 2015 at 11:42 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "stepped foot on" (that flight)
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> =46rom a 2013 book I was just listening to tonight on my way home from =
> the airport:
>
> Eventually, his firm had outgrown the space he was in and he'd bought an =
> office building on lower State Street into which he'd moved some two =
> years before. I realized with embarrassment that I'd never even stepped =
> foot in the place.
>
> --Sue Grafton, _W is for Wasted_, Chapter 11
>
> > On Oct 16, 2014, at 9:54 AM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at ATT.NET> wrote:
> >=20
> > According to many (about 418) Google News sources, "CDC Director Dr. =
> Tom Frieden said she [2nd Texas hospital nurse] never should have =
> stepped foot on the flight, but another federal official told CNN that =
> no one at the agency stopped her."
> >=20
> > I would say "set foot on", but many Google Web sites disagree.
> >=20
> > My attempt to count produces incomprehensible results -- searching for =
> "step foot on" (quoted) gives me pages that contain instead only "set =
> foot on".  Irregardless:
> >=20
> > "set foot on" -- 28,400,000 Google Web hits.
>
> I get "about 791,000 results" when I try it today, but as noted =
> elsewhere these numbers are essentially meaningless.  It *is* possible =
> to do an actual count (ignoring duplicates and other minor matters) by =
> going through the hits by advancing through the figures corresponding to =
> the pages at the bottom of each page.  Doing so in this case yields the =
> figure of 330 hits for "set foot on" (which of course includes some =
> present as well as past tense occurrences) and 405 for "stepped foot =
> on".  I find this quite surprising myself, since I couldn't remember =
> coming across the latter before it was mentioned in this thread.  I =
> suspect, though, that I wouldn't have noticed the occurrence in the =
> Grafton novel if we hadn't just been discussing it; I would have just =
> heard it as "set foot on" with "step" folded in. =20
>
> LH
>
> > "stepped foot on" -- merely 2,740,000 Google Web hits.
> >=20
> > Joel=20
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