[Ads-l] "that'll be the day"

Robin Hamilton robin.hamilton3 at VIRGINMEDIA.COM
Thu Apr 7 10:59:57 UTC 2016


I think there Buddy Holly is playing off rather than reflecting the normal 
sense of the idiom, which would be:

            'That'll be the day!" [when pigs fly].

Sometime / Never

Robin Hamilton

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-----Original Message----- 
From: Wilson Gray
Sent: Thursday, April 07, 2016 8:40 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: "that'll be the day"

_That'll Be the Day_

by Buddy Holly and Jerry Allison

Well, that'll be the day, when you say goodbye
Yes, that'll be the day, when you make me cry
You say you're gonna leave, you know it's a lie
'Cause that'll be the day, when I die

Et seq.

On Thu, Apr 7, 2016 at 2:05 AM, x <
0000053c1ce4c7f7-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu> wrote:

> watched john wayne's the searchers yesterday in which wayne repeatedly
> says "that'll be the day". but what "day" is he talking about? and what
> "day" does the phrase refer to? i wonder if the phrase has a biblical
> reference. is it possibly the "day" of the apocalypse, the last day on
> earth? makes sense.
>
> Sent from my iPhone
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



-- 
-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

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org 

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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