[Ads-l] "Great toe" [was: A couple of first-heards]

[Joel Berson]

Wilson, surely you remember hearing the line in "Coriolanus" --

a1616   Shakespeare Coriolanus (1623) i. i. 153   What do you thinke? You, the great Toe of this Assembly?

Well, I forgive you -- nor do I.  But I'm sure I read or heard it at least once somewhere.


P.S.  One of only two quotations in the OED2, the other being 1741.  But common enough in medical books, whose authors presumably consider themselves too adult to write "big toe".


Joel

      From: Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
 To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU 
 Sent: Tuesday, June 16, 2015 12:05 AM
 Subject: [ADS-L] A couple of first-heards
   
Heard on medical reality-TV show from Louisville:

Grandmother: "She gave me my first _grandboy_!

Doctor            : "His _great toe_ presents as gangrenous."


"Grandboy" is in at least four on-line dictionaries, but I haven't heard it
or read it, before.

Naturally, I'm quite familiar with "great toe," but this is the first that
I've ever heard anyone actually say it.

-- 
-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