[Ads-l] TV dialogue from _NUMB3RS_:

[Wilson Gray]

A. White guy: What's "selling wolf-tickets"?
B. Token black guy: Running a bad bluff. You know: "the boy who cried
'wolf'."

Nobody has ever explained it to me that way, before, or any other way, for
that matter. But I'm willing to buy it. It makes as much sense as any other
folk-etymology and more than most.

FWIW, I once floated the possibility that BE _laid_ - "well-dressed," only
of males because that was the way it was and not because of any semantic
interference attributable to WE _(get) laid_ - may be an extension of the
concept of the English aristocrat whose clothing is _laid out_ for him by
his batman, reinforced by the concept of the dear departed who is _laid
out_ in sartorial splendor for the viewing, the clipping of _out_ being
comparable to the reduction of _done for_ to _done_.
-- 
-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

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