[Ads-l] Heard on re-run of Reno 911

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Sun Jul 31 05:44:57 UTC 2016


Clearly, the rhyme was *far* more widespread than I had any reason to
suspect. My impression was that it was something that only a few random
classmates at my particular grade school used. Hearing it  - on TV - for
the first time in about three-quarters of a century was startling, to say
the least.

OTOH, I've seen Stand By Me about a half-dozen times, without ever noticing
it.

Youneverknow.

On Fri, Jul 29, 2016 at 11:03 AM, Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at gmail.com> wrote:

> The extended version appears in the movie "Stand By Me":
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsSA_C4Tfm8
>
> That bit of dialogue is taken directly from "The Body," the Stephen King
> novella the movie is based on:
>
> https://books.google.com/books?id=Hs3NCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA390
>
> On Fri, Jul 29, 2016 at 5:45 AM, Margaret Lee <
> 0000006730deb3bf-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu> wrote:
>
> > I heard my children and their friends say this--the whole thing-- when
> > they were growing in the 80's and '90's.
> > --Margaret Lee
> >
> >
> >       From: Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> >  To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> >  Sent: Thursday, July 28, 2016 4:24 PM
> >  Subject: Heard on re-run of Reno 911
> >
> > A. Shut up!
> >
> > B. _I don't shut up, I grow up and, every time/when I look at you, I
> throw
> > up!_
> >
> > Twelve hits.
> >
> > I last heard this ca. 1943, in St. Louis. Google also has an extended
> > version that's new to me:
> >
> > "... and your mama/papa comes around the corner and licks it up."
> >
> > "Every time" was preferred to "when" in StL. IAC, it was very rare, to
> the
> > extent that I thought that the first person that I heard say it had
> coined
> > it. You can imagine my shock, when I heard the black Reno cop say it.
> >
> > Youneverknow.
> >
> >
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> 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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