[Ads-l] Heard on Corrupt Crimes: _to put on_ "to pretend, to fake it"

[Wilson Gray]

"If he [J. T. Lundy] was _putting on_ [that he was heart-broken over the
injury to his horse, Alydar], then he was doing a great job of it!"
- Tom Dixon
Insurance-adjuster
Lexington, Kentucky

As hard as it may be to believe, I have misplaced the relevant volume of
DARE. So, I suppose that this intransitive _put on_ is cited in DARE, but I
don't know that it is. IAC, I've been familiar with it since I learned to
talk - e.g. a child pretending to be sick or hurt in order to get the
attention of its parents is said to be "putting on":

That child is just putting on. Don't pay it no mind.

The use of the term by a white Kentuckian, IAC, is an indication that its
use is not peculiar to black East Texans.

AFAIK, this intransitive _put on_ has no connection with the transitive
hippie-ism, _put someone on_. I first heard that from a fellow-GI from
Darien, Connecticut, back in 1959. Unfortunately, he's had a stroke. It
would be interesting to know whether he learned that in Darien or at
Stanford, out of which he had dropped before joining the Army.

-- 
-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

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