[Ads-l] ruin your whole day
Jonathan Lighter
wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM
Thu Jun 8 00:03:40 UTC 2023
Literal but hyperbolic - or understated, as in 11/12/24 and 12/3/59.
Certainly a popular idiom for sixty years in my experience alone.
1924 Columbus [O.] Sunday Dispatch (March 23) Magazine Sec. [unp.]:
Something that can ruin your whole day....The half heard conversation!...If
you could only find out what happened!
1924 Indianapolis Star (Nov. 12) 20: You can drag one of these beanies
["slingshots"] over the fence behind you, and it won't go off and ruin your
whole day.
1938 Evening Star (Washington, D.C.) (Oct. 5) B-6: You don't want jangled
nerves to ruin your whole day just because you had a bad night.
1939 Chicago Daily News (Nov. 8) 21: Don't Let a Headache Ruin Your Whole
Day!
1951 C. L. McDermott _A Yank on Piccadilly_ (N.Y.: Vantage Press) 7: Guys
like this can ruin my whole day.
1959 Milwaukee Journal (Dec. 3) 20: Try to avoid mid-air collisions - just
one may ruin your whole day.
Etc.
JL
--
"If the truth is half as bad as I humorously think it is, you can't handle
the truth."
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