[Ads-l] _broker than the Ten Commandments_

[Jonathan Lighter]

As well you might be.

Armstrong may have been referring to the '30s.

JL

On Fri, Apr 15, 2016 at 9:02 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Apr 15, 2016 at 8:43 PM, ADSGarson O'Toole <
> adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Year: 2000
> > Book: The Facts on File Dictionary of American Regionalisms
> > Author: Robert Hendrickson
> > Publisher: Facts on File, New York
> > Page 606
> >
> > [Begin excerpt]
> > broker than the Ten Commandments A phrase common in the 1930s.
> > "'Listen, bud, I'm flat broke. I'm broker'n the Ten Commandments.'"
> > (Henry Roth, From Bondage, 1996)
> > [End excerpt]
> >
>
> I saw that. But I was deterred from using it by "1996."
>
>
> --
> -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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