[Ads-l] Attention Garson: new postdating of (metaphorical) "prime the pump"

[George Thompson]

You have to keep in mind that back on the old Trump homestead in Brooklyn,
his family had a pump -- that was how Brooklyn people got their water, in
olden times, the 1940s & 50s.  So he's very familiar with having to prime a
water pump, and naturally the metaphor would come to his mind.

GAT

On Fri, May 12, 2017 at 10:39 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

> From an interview with President Trump (as in Pump) in The Economist [
> http://www.economist.com/Trumptranscript]:
>
> Reporter: But beyond that it’s OK if the tax plan increases the deficit?
>
> Trump: It is OK, because it won’t increase it for long. You may have two
> years where you’ll…you understand the expression “prime the pump”?
>
> Reporter: Yes.
>
> Trump: We have to prime the pump.
>
> Reporter:It’s very Keynesian.
>
> Trump: We’re the highest-taxed nation in the world. Have you heard that
> expression before, for this particular type of an event?
>
> Reporter: Priming the pump?
>
> Trump: Yeah, have you heard it?
>
> Reporter: Yes.
>
> Trump: Have you heard that expression used before? Because I haven’t heard
> it. I mean, I just…I came up with it a couple of days ago and I thought it
> was good. It’s what you have to do.
>
> Reporter: It’s...
>
> Trump: Yeah, what you have to do is you have to put something in before
> you can get something out.
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



-- 
George A. Thompson
The Guy Who Still Looks Stuff Up in Books.
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998.

But when aroused at the Trump of Doom / Ye shall start, bold kings, from
your lowly tomb. . .
L. H. Sigourney, "Burial of Mazeen", Poems.  Boston, 1827, p. 112

The Trump of Doom -- affectionately (of course) also known as The Dunghill
Toadstool.  (Here's a picture of one.)
http://www.parliament.uk/worksofart/artwork/james-gillray/an-excrescence---a-fungus-alias-a-toadstool-upon-a-dunghill/3851

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