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Graves? I don't think so.
Oh, be fair, Faldage. Graves may not have *coined the word, but it was he who made it current *currency (if anyone did).
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>It's a translation of Seneca's word apocolocyntosis...
whose translation was that? thanks ASp!
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whose translation was that?
Beats me. Graves was born in 1895 which would make him a little too young in 1856 to be translating Seneca. But then I think water is wet, so what do I know?
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Time back way back during the bad time when one's duty section had duty the next day, overnight liberty (commonly known to the civilian as shore leave) expired at midnight rather than at the normal 0800 or whenever it was. This was referred to as Cinderella liberty and one spoke of oneself as "turning into a pumpkin".
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Nice wwftd, tsuwm ~ and here's an emoticon for ya 
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Yeah, that wwftd, today, was some pumpkins! And then some! 
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are found in Roger Whitaker's chambers.
TEd
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When my kids were ;in 4H, they all raised pumpkins. They even tried a Japanese developed
plant hormone, the name of which I now forget. But they never got really big ones, such as:
"The world-record pumpkin is a 1,061 pounder --
raised in Lowville, N.Y., last year. As the first
winner to achieve 1,000 pounds, it won a $50,000
prize from the World Pumpkin Confederation, of
Collins, N.Y. The organization is offering another
$50,000 to the person who raises the first
1,500-pound pumpkin."
Not even the Peanuts comic strip Giant Pumpkin got that big!
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I finally found some citations for some pumpkins other than my quoted source, Dr. Bill!...but putting "some pumpkins slang" into the search. Here's one from Bartleby, an excerpt from H. L. Mencken's The American langauge (don't know why this didn't come up on the Bartleby site search: >Thornton, in 1912, substituted the following: Forms of speech now obsolete or provincial in England, which survive in the United States, such as allow, bureau, fall, gotten, guess, likely, professor, shoat. Words and phrases of distinctly American origin, such as belittle, lengthy, lightning-rod, to darken one’s doors, to bark up the wrong tree, to come out at the little end of the horn, blind tiger, cold snap, gay Quaker, gone coon, long sauce, pay dirt, small potatoes, some pumpkins. Nouns which indicate quadrupeds, birds, trees, articles of food, etc., that are distinctively American, such as ground-hog, hang-bird, hominy, live-oak, locust, opossum, persimmon, pone, succotash, wampum, wigwam. Names of persons and classes of persons, and of places, such as Buckeye, Cracker, Greaser, Hoosier, Old Bullion, Old Hickory, the Little Giant, Dixie, Gotham, the Bay State, the Monumental City. Words which have assumed a new meaning, such as card, clever, fork, help, penny, plunder, raise, rock, sack, ticket, windfall.< Here's the whole page from Bartleby. http://www.bartleby.com/185/pages/page41.htmlThis from Louisa May Alcott's Little Women: MEG : Amy, what have you been doing? AMY : Don't laugh, Jo. I only changed the little bottle of cologne for a big one. I gave all of my money to get it. BETH : Amy! MEG : Darling! That was unselfish of you. JO : You're some pumpkins, Amy. AMY : I felt ashamed thinking only of myself. And this from a Mexican War journal by one George F. Ruxton (in Spanish..consuelo or anyone?): Uno suele encontrarse con criaturas muy hermosas y cuando una mujer mexicana combina tales perfecciones, son «como calabazas», «some pumpkins», como dicen los habitantes de Missouri cuando se refieren a algo superlativo, cuando hablan de mujeres. http://sunsite.unam.mx/revistas/1847/Ruxton-i.htmlThere were still more pages of hits I didn't have time to scour, Dr. Bill, if you want to try finding some more.
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In reply to:
Uno suele encontrarse con criaturas muy hermosas y cuando una mujer mexicana combina tales perfecciones, son «como calabazas», «some pumpkins», como dicen los habitantes de Missouri cuando se refieren a algo superlativo, cuando hablan de mujeres.
One sometimes finds oneself in the company of these beautiful creatures [women], and when a Mexican woman exibits these perfections she is "some pumpkins" as they say in Missouri when speaking of things superlative, especially women 
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