[Ads-l] Richard Lewis R.I.P.

[Shapiro, Fred]

The comedian Richard Lewis had a generally miserable life.  His only real happiness came from my crediting him with the earliest known use of the insulting idiom "the --- from Hell" about a person.  I am not being credited by name in media coverage of his passing, but this week the New York Times (twice), the Washington Post, Rolling Stone, and Esquire have all mentioned the Yale Book of Quotations in this connection.

Fred Shapiro


------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org