[Ads-l] to spark a phone

[Ben Zimmer]

On Sun, Mar 18, 2018 at 1:57 PM, Barretts Mail <mail.barretts at gmail.com>
wrote:

> On 18 Mar 2018, at 10:41, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:
> >
> >> On Mar 18, 2018, at 1:19 PM, Barretts Mail <mail.barretts at GMAIL.COM>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> On 15 March, the The Washington Post ran an article that seems to have
> coined an expression for touching button on your phone so it emits light
> without unlocking.
> >>
> >> http://wapo.st/2FJiSRC <http://wapo.st/2FJiSRC>
> >> "She found a dating app on her boyfriend’s phone. Then she bought a
> samurai sword.”
> >> by Kyle Swenson
> >>
> >> According to an affidavit filed by police, the room was dark, and she
> sparked her phone to see better.
> >> ——
> >>
> >> Much better than “I hit the home button so my phone would emit a little
> bit of light.”
> >>
> > I like Lovell's “scared the living poop out of” collocation too.  They
> sound like quite the couple.  Maybe Javier was inspired by reruns of the
> old SNL routines with John Belushi as samurai dry cleaner, samurai deli
> man, samurai lawyer, et al.
>
> That cracked me up, too. Unfortunately the HDAS doesn’t have “living” and
> the p-z volume is unpublished.
>
> Wiktionary (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/living <
> https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/living>) has “Used as an intensifier” for
> “living”. The OLD doesn’t have this meaning. BB


OED3 (Dec. 2016 update) has the relevant meaning of "living":

---
colloq. (orig. U.S.). As an intensifier, in _to beat_ (also _scare_, etc.)
_the living shit_, _hell_, etc., _out of (a person or thing)_: to —— (a
person or thing) to an excessive or violent degree.
Cf. _to beat_ (also _scare_, etc.) _the (living) daylights_ (also
_daylight_) out of at DAYLIGHT n. Phrases 2b,
_to —— (the) hell out_ of at HELL n. and int. Phrases 5e,
_to —— the shit out of_ (a person or thing) at SHIT n. and adj. Phrases 2.
1904   Anaconda (Montana) Standard 24 July ii. 5/6   For two cents I'd beat
the living life out of you.
1935   J. Farrell Studs Lonigan i. i. 7   He had bashed the living moses
out of that smoke who pulled a razor on him over in Carter Playground.
1950   R. Moore Candlemas Bay 24   I'm going to beat the living pickle out
of this goddam sprout of mine.
1954   V. Randolph Pissing in Snow (1976) xcix. 146   So then the porters
beat the living shit out of him.
1973   Los Angeles Times 31 Oct. ii. 7/5   The move scared the living
bejesus out of the United States.
2004   P. Southern Craze xxii. 160   Dru detested him... His..slack-arse
simpering servitude made him want to punch the living hell out of him.
---

Also somewhat relevant, my Strong Language post on "VERB the TABOO TERM out
of (something)":

https://stronglang.wordpress.com/2015/09/16/im-going-to-have-to-science-the-shit-out-of-this/

--bgz

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