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addict
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What I'd like to know is this: what is the difference between a problem and an issue? I once heard someone say that her dog had "territory issues". Dogs don't have issues. Dogs have territory, and they don't like trespassers. This is not an issue - is it? I'd also like to know the difference between "use" and "utilize" - I don't mean the dictionary definition. When someone says "we'll utilize our resources", is that different from "we'll use our resources"? When I challenged someone on that, he said that "utilize" meant to use more completely. I suggested that being made love to once was being "used", and being made love to six times was being "utilized", and he didn't get it. Wasn't amused, either.
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veteran
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veteran
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Grrrrr. Straight eight, Creith! Don't bury those who over-misutilize the term "issues" in the rose garden, bury them instead, piece by piece, in the walls of a Trappist Monastery until they say they repent. 
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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I could care less, but why bother?
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,379 |
Guessing: from to stamp a bill or invoice "PAID"
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addict
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Thank you, Jackie! And I was jumping-up-and-down delighted with the thread you recommended. I recently heard an interview with Carol Shields' daughter (about adapting her mother's book "Unless" for the stage). This woman is a lawyer, and she said "I never use 'in the event that..'. What's wrong with 'If..'?"
Oh, yeah!
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stranger
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stranger
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A variation on "pull up your socks" is "pull up your cotton." I heard it from my father who heard it from his. Since he was a blacksmith in the anthracite coal mines in Pennsylvania, I'll take a wild guess that it referred to pulling up the cotton wick in the coal-oil lamp worn on the miner's hat in order to get a little more light.
George F. Feissner
Math. Dept.
SUNY College at Cortland
Cortland, NY 13045
George F. Feissner
Math. Dept.
SUNY College at Cortland
Cortland, NY 13045
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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 2,891 |
Welcome gffeissner.
That's a perfect example of an expression that is confusing today. In the time of your grandfather and father, it would have been common and easily understood, but if I used it on the street today, people would have no idea what I meant to say.
Is this expressing still common in your area?
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Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 3,467
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Posts: 3,467 |
George:
I kinda doubt it. Almost all of the lanterns I have seen from mining operations have been water-carbide. It's a brighter cleaner light and there's no wick to worry about.
When I saw your expression my immediate thought was that it had something to do with pulling up one's underwear.
I just grabbed my unfortunately one-volume American Heritage Slang dictionary (unfortunate because the bastards only published the first of three volumes, A-G) and left us hanging. Anyway, there is no elucidation under cotton, but there is the phrase "have had the cotton" which means doomed. "You've bought it, you've had the cotton."
This volume has dozens of these slang phrases in it. "Come off the grass" is stop talking foolishness.
And other oddities: Baby-snatcher; who woulda thunk it meant the brakeman on a passenger train.
Come out of a bag = behave in an objectionable manner
Give the bag = leave a person suddenly
TEd
TEd
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Carpal Tunnel
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Does it tell you why these expressions came about TEd? Curiosity would niggle at me constantly if I only knew the answer. I mean, once you know that give the bag means leaving a person suddenly, it's nice to know why it means that - how the expression came about.
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Dec 9th, 2011
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You may be interested to see what we had to say in this thread:
