[Ads-l] to fly a sign

[Wilson Gray]

> I'd have said "hold" or "display."

Of course. And so would everybody* else. Normally, only watercraft fly a
special sign called an "ensign." One can only hope that "flying a sign"
doesn't become popular - or should that be, "doesn't catch on"?

*Read somewhere that -body is being driven out by -one. So, purely "for
fee-U-N,"to use a phrase popular when mother was a girl; I've never heard
it, only heard _about_ it from my mother - I've decided to stop using -one
and to start using -body, there being no distinction of any kind between
them, in my idiolect. I don't think that there's any distinction between
the two, in any variety of BE. But...

Youneverknow.

On Fri, Dec 15, 2017 at 3:59 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Kind of an unusual nuance of "fly."
>
> A reporter tells of a homeless woman who "flies a sign" asking for work.
>
> The video shows her holding her cardboard sign chest-high with both hands.
>
> I'd have said "hold" or "display."
>
> JL
>
> --
> "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
>



-- 
-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