[Ads-l] "them's the breaks"

[Stephen Goranson]

get a break, catch a break--related?
sg
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From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, July 7, 2022 4:43 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Subject: Re: "them's the breaks"

When I referred to "I got a bad break," I was actually thinking of the Lou Gehrig speech.  (I recently watched the film Pride of the Yankees.  I hate the Yankees, but was really impressed by the fact that Babe Ruth was played by ... Babe Ruth.)

Fred Shapiro


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From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Bill Mullins <amcombill at HOTMAIL.COM>
Sent: Thursday, July 7, 2022 4:41 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Subject: Re: "them's the breaks"

>
> I am probably just missing something, but it seems to me that the OED is
> omitting an expression larger than "them's the breaks."  I don't see in any of
> the OED senses that the word "break" can refer to a stroke of fortune that
> could be bad.  Think of the expression "I got a bad break."
>
> Fred

Or, a quote which was one sentence away from making it into the Yale Book of Quotes:
"For the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break."
Which was immediately followed by the more well known: "Yet today I consider myself
the luckiest man on the face of the earth." (Lou Gehrig, 1939).

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