[Ads-l] "In my room"

[Jim Parish]

Hm. The narrator of _Roderick Random_ is supposed to be a Scot, and 
Pepys was a Londoner born and bred.

Jim Parish


On 7/13/2017 6:18 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> I'm familiar with this from 19th C. Irish English.
>
> "In the room of" = 'in place of; instead of'
>
> "He shot his true love in the room of a swan." (Old Ballad)
>
> (Not in a swan's room, n.b.)
>
> JL
>
> On Thu, Jul 13, 2017 at 7:07 PM, Jim Parish <jparish at siue.edu> wrote:
>
>> Yes, yes, I'm quite familiar with the song....
>>
>>
>>
>> On 7/13/2017 5:41 PM, Dan Goncharoff wrote:
>>
>>> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bV-dWhYklqE
>>>
>>> On Jul 13, 2017 6:12 PM, "Jim Parish" <jparish at siue.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>> A while back, I was reading Pepys' Diary and was struck by the repeated
>>>> (metaphorical) use of "in my room", where, in my idiolect, "in my place"
>>>> or
>>>> even "in my stead" would be more natural. Now, I'm reading _Roderick
>>>> Random_, written about eighty years later, and I have encountered the
>>>> phrase again.
>>>>
>>>> I have never run into the phrase anywhere else, and certainly not in any
>>>> contemporary source. So I'm curious: is this construction still in use
>>>> anywhere? Does anyone know when and where it was used?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Jim Parish
>>>>
>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>>>
>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>>
>>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>
>

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org