[Ads-l] break a leg

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Fri Jul 17 03:57:35 UTC 2020


>The technique required to see the citations at Green’s Dictionary of
> Slang (GDoS) is not obvious.

Hear! Hear!

On Thu, Jul 16, 2020 at 7:10 PM ADSGarson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Andy Bach wrote:
> > > The first citation contained "broke her leg above the knee".
> >
> > Makes one wonder what the development of this slang (idiom?) was.
> > Well, me, anway.
>
> The technique required to see the citations at Green’s Dictionary of
> Slang (GDoS) is not obvious. When you visit a webpage for an entry on
> the GDoS website you will notice on the far right the phrase "Show
> all" appears. Adjacent to "Show all" there is a grey symbol composed
> of three short dashes and four longer dashes. Let us call this the
> "Show all" symbol.
>
> Each webpage for an entry also displays one of more timelines. On the
> right of each timeline there is a symbol that looks like the "Show
> all" symbol. If you click on the "Show all" symbol adjacent to a time
> line then a set of citations will be displayed.
>
> The following webpage shows 6 senses and 6 timelines. You can click on
> each one of the six "Show all" symbols to see six collections of
> citations.
>
> The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang (HDAS)
> compiled by the sagacious slang expert J. E. Lighter has an entry for
> "leg: break a leg" on page 419 of volume 2. There are three senses,
> but I do not see "broke a leg above the knee". Maybe it appears
> elsewhere.
>
> Garson
>
>
>
>
> https://greensdictofslang.com/entry/o4zbvxa
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


-- 
-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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