[Ads-l] Idiom backfire

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

In 1952 nudism was comically attacked as noted in my previous post. My
exploration also uncovered a 1910 citation that employed a similar
style of reasoning to justify nudism.

Date: February 25, 1910
Newspaper: The Moran Herald
Newspaper Location: Moran, Kansas
Article: Things We Think
Author: Elbert Bede
Quote Page 4, Column 3
Database: Newspapers.com
[Begin excerpt]
Raymond Duncan's wife is trying to make us believe that we ought to
adorn our bodies after the fashion of a Greek statue, and that If God
had intended us to wear clothes Adam and Eve would have been born that
way. She says she expects to see the time when people will perambulate
around this mundane sphere garbed in nothing but that provided in the
beginning by an all-wise and far-seeing Providence.
[End excerpt]

The 1886 citation below points to other attributes shared by many
humans at birth.

Date: October 30, 1886
Newspaper: St Joseph Herald
Newspaper Location: Saint Joseph, Michigan
Article: Humorous
Quote Page 1, Column 6
Database: Newspapers.com
[Begin excerpt]
--It is said that the human race is destined to be bald and toothless.
This need not alarm the people seriously. A great many have been born
that way, and the race is none the worse for it.--Lowell Times
[End excerpt]

Garson

On Fri, May 31, 2019 at 6:24 AM ADSGarson O'Toole
<adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I first heard the nudity joke a few decades ago. It is listed in two
> references under "Nudity". Below is an instance in 1952.
>
> Placing this joke in a "mangled idiom" or "twisted idiom" category
> makes sense, but I have not yet seen it under that grouping.
>
> Date: May 26, 1952
> Newspaper: The Capital Times
> Newspaper Location: Madison, Wisconsin
> Article: From Where I Sit
> Author: Herb Jacobs
> Quote Page 2, Column 6
> Database: Newspapers.com
> https://www.newspapers.com/image/521616996/?terms=nudity
> [Begin excerpt]
> Just to prove that her pattern of thought was consistent, I hasten to
> quote her settled opinions on nudity of any sort. If the good Lord had
> intended us to run around naked," she said, "we would have been born
> that way."
> [End excerpt]
>
> [ref] 1971, Bartlett's Unfamiliar Quotations by Leonard Louis
> Levinson, Topic: Nudity, Quote Page 206, Cowles Book Company: Henry
> Regnery Company, Chicago, Illinois. (Verified with scans)[/ref]
> [Begin excerpt]
> If God had meant for people to go nude they would have been born that way.
> Ad in The Village Voice
> [End excerpt]
>
> [ref] 1986,The Penguin Dictionary of Modern Humorous Quotations,
> Compiled by Fred Metcalf, Section: Nudity, Quote Page 177, Viking
> Penguin, New York. (Verified on paper)[/ref]
> [Begin excerpt]
> If God had wanted us to walk around naked, we would have been born that way.
> Anon
> [End excerpt]
>
> Garson
>
> On Fri, May 31, 2019 at 1:46 AM Mark Mandel <markamandel at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Here are a couple of items posted in a blog conversation by Ace Lightning,
> > a Dreamwidth user; reposted here by her permission:
> >
> > When I was first learning Wicca <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicca>, my
> > mother objected to the idea of a whole bunch of people going skyclad
> > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyclad_%28Neopaganism%29> together - and
> > she said, "If we were supposed to run around without clothes, we'd be born
> > that way!" - and then realized what she'd said. We had a good laugh about
> > that.
> >
> > I've got another one like that. When my son was a teenager, we were having
> > a typical adult/teenager disagreement, and I was very angry, and I started
> > to say, "Why, you little son-of-a-bitch!" - and caught myself. After that
> > we were both laughing too hard to argue any more.
> >
> > Is there any study or collection of anecdotes like these, in which a
> > speaker uses an idiom or trope, which then "backfires" as the speaker or a
> > hearer recognizes it as absurd in the current context?
> >
> > Mark Mandel
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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