[Ads-l] ADS-L Digest - 21 Jan 2023 to 22 Jan 2023 (#2023-21)

Jan Clute janclute at GMAIL.COM
Mon Jan 23 19:22:55 UTC 2023


Please hold my mail if  unable to deliver.  It is terrible out there and 
my mailbox is bent, hard to close. -Jan Clute

On 1/23/2023 12:00 AM, ADS-L automatic digest system wrote:
> There are 4 messages totaling 333 lines in this issue.
>
> Topics of the day:
>
>    1. Unsourced quotation (3)
>    2. Mike Hunt
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Date:    Sun, 22 Jan 2023 12:34:54 -0500
> From:    Mark Mandel <markamandel at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: Unsourced quotation
>
> Arnold Zwicky writes in his blog
> https://arnoldzwicky.org/2023/01/17/the-bearded-cartoonist-post-simectomy/#more-125699
> (last two paragraphs):
>
> Famously, Flannery O’Connor is quoted as explaining: “I write because I
> don’t know what I think until I read what I say.”
>
> So she is quoted, again and again, but never with an actual source that I
> can find. However, the leading idea in her quote has been expressed in
> various ways by a considerable number of writers in citable places, among
> them George Bernard Shaw, Stephen King, William Faulkner, and Joan Didion.
> Didion’s pithy version: “I don’t know what I think until I write it down”.
> <<<<<
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date:    Sun, 22 Jan 2023 14:29:36 -0500
> From:    George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU>
> Subject: Mike Hunt
>
> I found this many years ago, in the indictment files of the New York County
> District Attorney.
> He was attempting to indict a publication called The Flash for naughtiness,
> and one of the issues was included as evidence.
> An illustration is captioned:
>
>              A Gallery of Comicalities.  [An umbrella in the woods; a bonnet
> and a hat and gloves on the grass near it; male and female feet, shod,
> protrude, his toes downward, hers upwards; beyond the umbrella, a hunter,
> looking astonished, with his dog.  Mike Hunt, sc.]
>
>              Flash, Vol. 1, #4, Sunday Morning, July 10, 1842, p. 1, cols.
> 2-3
>
> It accompanies a naughty story about a couple caught copulating in the
> shrubbery at the Elysian Fields, in Hoboken, the great site for casual outdoor
> recreation for folks from New York, before the Central Park was created.
>
>
> I don't see "Mike Hunt" in either JL's Historical Dict., nor in JGreen's
> Dictionary.  However, I believe it is a traditional naughty joke, playing
> on shifting the juncture that naturally goes between "Mike" and "Hunt" to
> the middle of "Mike".
>
>
> GAT
>

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