[Ads-l] "on-court gags =?UTF-8?Q?=E2=80=94_?=or reams, as the players called them "

George Thompson george.thompson at NYU.EDU
Tue Dec 29 18:22:54 UTC 2015


>From the obituary of Meadowlark Lemon in today's NYTimes:

Within a few years, he had assumed the central role of showman, taking over
from the Trotters’ long-reigning clown prince Reece Tatum, whom everyone
called Goose.

Tatum, who had left the team around the time Lemon joined it, was a superb
ballplayer whose on-court gags — or reams, as the players called them — had
established the team’s reputation for laugh-inducing wizardry at a
championship level.

(This is referring to the Harlem Globetrotters basketball act.)

I've tried for years through prayer and fasting to ascend to that glorious
region where there are complete sets of HDAS, but I remain earthbound.  So
I may never know whether HDAS has this term.

GAT


-- 
George A. Thompson
The Guy Who Still Looks Stuff Up in Books.
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998..

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



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