[Ads-l] "There are no backsies" -- an adult adopt's a feature of children's speech

Mark Mandel mark.a.mandel at GMAIL.COM
Sat Jan 5 13:42:07 UTC 2019


I've never seen or heard "buttinsky" used in this way, but only referring
to a person who speaks out of (informal) turn or who pokes into other
people's issues that are none of their business. I think I've also
encountered it in adult speech ("What a buttinsky!").

I *do* remember "frontsy-backsy" from growing up in NYC, late '50s - early
'60s, but not later.

Mark


On Fri, Jan 4, 2019, 10:55 AM Andy Bach <afbach at gmail.com wrote:

> > Is “fronties-backsies” just a NYC thing?
>
> We had "no butt-in-skys" when I was a kid.  "No backsies" was more often
> "no take-backs".
>
> On Thu, Jan 3, 2019 at 7:21 PM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
> wrote:
>
> > Is “fronties-backsies” just a NYC thing?  No relation to “no backsies”
> > (which my spellcheck insists should be “no backsides”).  The idea is that
> > when you’re waiting on line (this is New York, so it’s not *in* line),
> you
> > can’t let a friend in the line behind you without violating ethical
> rules.
> > But you can let them in in front of you, and then they can trade places
> > with you.  Of course, this can be objected to by some, with the cry “no
> > frontsies-backsies”.  Oops, just realized this rang a bell, and sure
> enough…
> >
> >
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2006-October/063223.html
> >
> > But I’m not sure this made it to adult speech, or the other example I
> > cited in that thread, “black black no back”.
> >
> > LH
>

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