[Ads-l] "Gonna _Put a Cricket In Your Ear_''

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Thu Mar 12 04:25:32 UTC 2015


Title of a song recorded by Jimmy Dawson on the Banner label in 1960

A casual Googling takes the more usual - in my experience - "put a bug in
your ear" back to 1894.

Speaking of "cricket," is anyone else familiar with the metal
whatchamajuker that was used to make a "click-clock" sound, but which was,
nevertheless, called a "cricket," for some unfathomable reason? It was a
toy, but nuns used it to signal when to do what, in the course of various
Catholic ceremonies.

-- 
-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



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