[Ads-l] 'sploding heads

[Jonathan Lighter]

Actually, Wilson, I *do* know it.

Its application to S---- P---- is what surprised (oops! I mean "shocked") me.

JL

On Sun, Jul 3, 2016 at 2:33 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 3, 2016 at 9:15 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Thinking cap?
>>
>
> Extracted from "put on your thinking-caps," routinely used, at one time, to
> warn pupils that there was about to be a test or to warn quiz-show
> participants that a hard question was coming.
>
> The full, derived slang-phrase is "to have an inkling in the back of one's
> thinking-cap."
>
> Y'all ain' know dis?!
>
>  I've never been able to decide whether "thinking-cap" here still refers to
> the metaphorical "actual" thinking-cap that you "put on" or whether "in the
> back of one's thinking cap" > "in (the back of one's) mind."
> --
> -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



-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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