[Ads-l] _break nasty_ "suddenly get threateningly angry, brush off, shine on, ig"

[Jonathan Lighter]

I always try to "bust cool."  As in _West Side Story_.

JL

On Wed, Feb 14, 2018 at 12:14 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> A Late Summer’s Fire
> https://books.google.com/books?isbn=152450405X
> Sandra Rorie - 2016 - ‎Preview
> I didn't know if I was going to be quiet and not confront him. It wouldn't
> do any good. I knew from many times in the past that he would just _break
> nasty_ and still deny that he was having an affair with this woman.
>
> The UD, 2005:
> Break Nasty
> (v): 1. to go the hell off on someone
> 2. to inform someone of their monumentous mistake
> the meanest way you possibly can
> 3. to inform someone of their incompetence
>
>
> I use "break nasty on," but one of my brothers, about twenty years younger
> than I am, prefers "break nasty with." He learned the phrase in Sacramento,
> whereas I learned it in Los Angeles.
>
> --
> -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