[Ads-l] locked and loaded, loaded and locked

[Jonathan Lighter]

That explains it.

It also shows that ref. to flintlocks is unnecessary.

JL

On Mon, Aug 14, 2017 at 3:04 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> With an M-1, first, you lock the safety, making it impossible for the rifle
> to be fired, even on purpose, then you insert an eight-round clip, a
> process that automatically loads one round into the chamber. Hence:
>
> LOCK! ONE ROUND! LOAD!
>
> The M-14, issued to my unit in 1961 - Wikipedia says that the M-1 was
> deprecated in 1959, but that was only on paper, apparently; until I went to
> the arms room, one day in 1961, and the armorer handed me an M-14 instead
> of an M-!, I'd never even heard of the M-14 - has a sixteen-round magazine
> instead of a clip. But
>
> LOCK! ONE ROUND! LOAD!
>
> still worked for the firing-line, since the M-14 uses essentially the same
> operating-system as the M-1, a magazine replacing the clip being the only
> significant change. So, no training in its use was necessary
>
> On Fri, Aug 11, 2017 at 9:05 AM, Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Trump said on Twitter this morning that "military solutions are now fully
> > in place, locked and loaded, should North Korea act unwisely."
> >
> > OED3 dates "lock and load" to 1940:
> >
> > 1940   N.Y. Times 19 Nov. 12/3   Lieut. Col. Joseph T. Hart, range
> officer,
> > boomed through his microphone, ‘Lock and Load’.
> >
> > But there are numerous earlier cites for "load(ed) and lock(ed)" in the
> > context of firearms, like this from 1898:
> >
> > ---
> > Detroit Free Press, Dec. 18, 1898, p. 10, col. 5
> > It was in its water proof covering and as he removed the covering, the
> > rifle, which was loaded and locked, was discharged. ... Collins had let
> > another soldier have his rifle to do guard duty, and latter had
> carelessly
> > left it loaded and locked.
> > ---
> >
> > Doesn't "load and lock" make more sense, since one locks the bolt before
> > loading the ammunition? I wonder if it changed to "lock and load" because
> > of the phonological constraints on "freezes," as Bill Cooper and Haj Ross
> > called such "A + B" orderings in their classic 1975 paper:
> >
> > http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/haj/worldorder.pdf
> >
> > --bgz
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > 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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