[Ads-l] "In my room"

[Jonathan Lighter]

So it was used everywhere.

Have you tried OED?

JL

On Thu, Jul 13, 2017 at 7:22 PM, Jim Parish <jparish at siue.edu> wrote:

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



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