[Ads-l] "go all to smash", '20s slang?

[Joel Berson]

I thank modern technology and TCM for permitting me to re-view this film and capture the source citation.


"Don't be surprised if I go all to smash on your hands -- I'm not responsible when I'm listening to wonderful music."

1923.  "Flaming Youth", intertitle, about five to seven minutes into the only surviving reel.  In "Fragments: Surviving Pieces of Lost Films", 2011.  (Both are in IMDb.)  Spoken by Colleen Moore, playing a young woman endeavoring to (and apparently succeeding in)  enamoring an older man, who (again apparently) had been romantically associated with her mother.


'20s slang?  Not a bit, I'm intrigued to learn.  Smash, n.1, 2.b., "A shivered or broken-up condition. Chiefly in phrases to break, knock etc., or go, to smash. Also used fig."  First literal appearance (in OED2) 1798; first figurative appearance 1807.

Joel




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