[Ads-l] "accident waiting to happen"

[Jonathan Lighter]

1905 _Central Kansas Democrat_ (Lyons, Kans.) (Oct 6) 6: We heard a man
tell another one the other day that he "Stood around looking just like an
accident waiting to happen." We nearly fainted.

JL

On Wed, Jul 5, 2023 at 1:33 PM George Thompson <george.thompson at nyu.edu>
wrote:

> The New Yorker very recently posted an article with the title "The Titan
> Submersible Was “an Accident Waiting to Happen”".
>
> Checking the America's Historical Newspapers database I find that that
> expression first appears in November 27, 1948, with 1067 quotations,
>
> I was put in mind of a similar expression, "an accident on its way to
> happen".  This appears in AHN 24 times, the earliest from February 21,
> 1916.
> I have heard it applied to a reckless driver.  AHN's first citation is
> applied to someone who needs a vacation; its second, from 1922, refers to
> someone who drives with worn-out brakes.
>
> A variant, "an accident on its way to happening" appears four times in AHN,
> the earliest from July 18, 1995, and all four are from the NY Post.
>
> Another possible variant, "an accident about to happen", appears 86 times
> in AHN.
> The first 28 passages are spread out between 1833 and 1853, and all quote
> the same passage from Sir Walter Scott, referring to a premonition of an
> accident.  The first passage simila4 to what I have in mind is from July
> 10, 1905, in a column of satirical remarks on the news, and refers to a
> series of mergers of banks: -- Louis Ochs as a promoter makes Pierpont
> Morgan look like an accident about to happen.
> The first passage to refer to a driver is from November 2, 1955, and
> asserts that an emotionally disturbed person behind the wheel is an
> accident about to happen
>
> GAT
>
> --
> George A. Thompson
> Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
> Univ. Pr., 1998.
>
> But when aroused at the Trump of Doom / Ye shall start, bold kings, from
> your lowly tomb. . .
> L. H. Sigourney, "Burial of Mazeen", Poems.  Boston, 1827, p. 112
>
> The Trump of Doom -- also known as The Dunghill Toadstool.  (Here's a
> picture of his great-grandfather.)
>
>
> https://heritagecollections.parliament.uk/collections/getrecord/HOP_WOA_3851
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


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