[Ads-l] "dancing fool" 'a fool for dancing'

[Dan Goncharoff]

Zappa sang Dancin' Fool on SNL on 10/21/78
DanG

On Fri, Apr 26, 2019 at 7:57 PM Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> OED's no help, but here are some notable occurrences of "dancing/dancin'
> fool":
>
> "The Dancin' Fool" (1920 silent comedy film)
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dancin%27_Fool
>
> "The Dancing Fool" (1932 animated cartoon with Betty Boop)
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dancing_Fool
>
> "Dancin' Fool" (1974 song by The Guess Who)
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancin%27_Fool_(The_Guess_Who_song)
>
> "Dancin' Fool" (1979 song by Frank Zappa)
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancin%27_Fool
>
>
> On Fri, Apr 26, 2019 at 7:12 PM Arnold M. Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu>
> wrote:
>
> > i've stumbled on this formulaic expression in preparing a posting (it
> > comes up in a song from the Broadway show "Once Upon a Mattress", a song
> > sung by the Jester -- i.e., a fool), and started to track it down, but easy
> > places on the net provided nothing useful, and (in my latest computer
> > screwup) the OED is at least temporarily unavailable to me.  it isn't
> > crucial to my posting, but my curiosity has been piquied...
> >
> > is there literature about the the history of this expression?  is there a
> > history of a larger usage "V-ing fool"?  (or are such occurrences parasitic
> > on "dancing fool"?)
> >
> >
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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