[Ads-l] to fly a sign

[Jonathan Lighter]

"-body" has one more syllable.

I choose on the basis of contextual prosody.

JL

On Fri, Dec 15, 2017 at 8:25 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> > 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
>



-- 
"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