[Ads-l] Ludacris's wedding announcement,

[Wilson Gray]

as quoted in People, January 26, 2015 P46c:

"Did the thing before 2015."

Back in '40's-'60's Saint Louis, "do the thing" was the ordinary slang term
for "marry, get married." I had no idea that this was, and is, used
anywhere else. (Ludacris was born in Champaign, moved to Chicago, and has
lived in Atlanta since middle school.)

Tales of Fantasy - Page 109
https://books.google.com/books?id=-IoUAAAAYAAJ
They talked long and earnestly upon this point, until, as the Caliph saw
that, rather than
_marry_
the owl, his Vizier preferred to remain a stork, he decided to
_do the thing_
himself.
Tudor Jenks - 1902

I'm being facetious, of course. Apparently, back in the day, Britspeak used
"do the thing" in the Yankspeak sense of "do it." That I was able to find
this instance in which the thing to do is to marry is, like any resemblance
to persons living or dead, purely coincidental. In BE, the thing to do is
*always* to marry.

Naturally, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find this covered in HDAS. But
we've recently moved and many books are still not unpacked, unfortunately.
:-(

-- 
-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