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

[Robin Hamilton]

Does one actually prime water [sic] pumps?  I'd always assumed this referred to
priming the pump in a petrol engine, or summat.

Mind you, I may be wrong, as when I was a youngun, pumps of any kind were still
a twinkle in the eye of the future, and we drew water from the well in a bucket.

R.

> 
>     On 12 May 2017 at 15:58 George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU> wrote:
> 
> 
>     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
>

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