[Ads-l] cosplay; meet-cute; my tiny violin

[Galen Buttitta]

Cosplay: Costuming oneself as a character from some media entity.

Meet Cute: Accidental/serendipitous introduction or meeting of two people leading to a romantic or emotional connection.

Sent from my iPhone

> On Feb 8, 2019, at 09:35, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> I
> Colin Stokes, in New Yorker (Feb. 11, 2019), p. 27:
> "When you look out the window, you see a lot of people doing excellent
> 'Walking Dead' cosplay."
> 
> Huh?
> 
> II
> E. Black, in Ibid., p. 35 [cartoon]: [Panel shows boy & girl grave robbers
> with shovels; both think, "Our shovels touched..." Caption is] "Grave
> Robber Meet-Cute."
> 
> Huh?
> 
> III
> Decades ago, perhaps in the late '50s, people might react unsympathetically
> to someone else's recital of misfortune by "playing" what today might be
> called "air violin," raising the left arm as if holding a violin and
> pretending to bow it with the right hand. (The stereotypical tear-jerking
> tune was elsewhen said to be "Hearts and Flowers," by Theodore Moses-Tobani
> [1893].)
> 
> Though it once seems to have been well known,  I haven't seen this gesture
> in decades. Once or twice in very recent years, however, I've seen a
> variation in which the thumb and forefinger of the left hand are held
> slightly apart while those of the right hand pretend to bow with a tiny
> bow. The following exchange occurred on CNN this morning:
> 
> JOHN BERMAN: Why can't we [Boston fans] ever get a win?
> 
> ERICA HILL: Awwwwwwww! Can you hear my tiny violin here? [Gestures.]
> 
> When did the violin get tiny?  (ISTR "the world's smallest playable violin"
> from a source like Ripley's Believe It or Not!! at some point long ago. It
> *was* tiny!)
> 
> JL
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> "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

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