[Ads-l] attactics; chest bumping

[Jonathan Lighter]

> If you think about it, you will realize the high-five is similar to the
handshake, a means of saying "I am greeting you with no weapons in my right
(dominant) hand".

Without ancient evidence, this is called "overthinking," so I won't think
about it.

I've been watching to catch a (formerly unnamed) "high-five" in movies made
before before 1980, but have never seen one.  I don't doubt, however, that
the gesture will soon be retrojected by H'wood into the nineteenth
century, along
with the chest bump, to join other 20th C. mannerisms.

By the time I encountered "high-five" ca1981, it was  being used in
baseball to congratulate a scoring base-runner. I wasn't watching much
sports back then, and never football.

Speaking of gestures, the Discovery Science Channel is running ads that
feature (from memory) the motto, "Science Is Giving the Finger to
Everything That's Known!"

Where "is" = 'means.'  I hope.

Though it isn't much better.

 JL

On Sat, Nov 14, 2015 at 8:48 AM, James A. Landau <JJJRLandau at netscape.com>
wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "James A. Landau" <JJJRLandau at NETSCAPE.COM>
> Subject:      Re: attactics; chest bumping
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Fri, 13 Nov 2015 08:23:36 ZONE -0500 Jonathan Lighter <
> wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> wrote:
>
> CNN speaks of Donald Trump's "attactics" against Ben Carson.
>
> Earlier this week they spent some time discussing chest bumps. No, not that
> kind.
>
> Does anyone know when this peculiar practice began?  I doubt that I was
> aware of it more than a dozen years ago, if then.
>
> Similarly (and maybe we've discussed this), I first became aware of
> high-fiving in the early 1980s.
>
> JL
>
> My response:
>
> "High five" appears in Merriam-Webster's 11th Collegiate Dictionary, page
> 586, with a date of 1980.
>
> I tried tracing the term in Google Books but the noise factor was too high.
>
>    - Jim Landau
>
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