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Joined: Dec 2011
Posts: 3
stranger
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stranger
Joined: Dec 2011
Posts: 3 |
I'm new to Wordsmith Talk, so please forgive my ignorance and inform/redirect me if this subject isn't new.
The phrase "last gasp of a dying fish" recently entered my mind.
I Googled the phrase (using the quotes) and got many verbatim hits, but what I didn't find was any clue as to the origin of the phrase.
Seems to me such phrases (and there are likely many more) form kinds of meta-words, and at least in this case they seem to contain similar but smaller phrases within: "last gasp" and "dying fish".
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803 |
One thing I'll say is that "last gasp of a dying fish", with the quotation marks, gets 45 Google hits. In the context of Google searches this is statistically indistinguishable from zero.
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Joined: Dec 2011
Posts: 3
stranger
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stranger
Joined: Dec 2011
Posts: 3 |
The phrase "last gasp of a flying dish" gets zero (0) Google hits. Not sure what you're getting at here, but I don't think you've proved that my question is meaningless.
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Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 5,295
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 5,295 |
No question is ever meaningless. I tried to understand the question better by googling 'meta-words' as I had no idea what they might be: link Looking at this page I see meta-words changed to meta keywords and meta tags. All I understand if I'm right is that this has to do with search engines? While your phrase 'last gasp of a dying fish' looks like a figure of speech to me.
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803 |
OK, I googled it again and this time I got 9 hits. Eight of them are from dates more or less evenly spaced out from June 2002 to Feb 2010. The ninth was a quote from a Mickey Spillane novel. I would suspect that that was the origin and the other hits are from folks who have read the novel and have the phrase stuck in their minds.
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Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542 |
well, well - I tried Google[books] (is there a verb for that action yet?!] and got two hits: the Spillane novel from 1976 and something by Lowell Thomas (1927) called European skyways: the story of a tour of Europe by airplane. here's the citation from the latter (Google has only a snippet): He must have seen the last-gasp-of-a-dying-fish look on my face, because the mechanic sitting next to Olley left the cockpit, crawled back into the cabin, took off his helmet and goggles, and handed them to me.(there is a also a Preview of the Spillane novel ( The Erection Set), and being somewhat intrigued by the title, I proceeded to amazon and found this amusing customer review, "I thought this would be enjoyably bad but it was just plain lousy.") link
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Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 5,295
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 5,295 |
"Gasping respiration is also referred to as agonal respiration and the name is appropriate because the gasping breaths appear uncomfortable and raise concern that the patient is suffering and in agony." (quote from a medical issue)
Google "last gasp of a dying"...and the metaforical use of agony appears to be applicable for whatever thing. Is it just another way of using agony? The last gasp a synonym for agony?
Last gasp of dying ashes
last gasp of a dying genre (the agony of a genre)? etc.
Last Gasp of a Dying Idiotologylast gasp of a dying dogma
Project Car Hell, Dying Marque's Last Gasp Edition: Kaiser Manhattan or Packard Clipper?
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Joined: Dec 2011
Posts: 3
stranger
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stranger
Joined: Dec 2011
Posts: 3 |
I'm not sure "meta-words" has a well-defined meaning. I was trying to use meta- as a prefix meaning something like "higher" which to my mind meant some sort of aggregation.
"Last gasp of a dying fish" seems to me both a figure of speech and maybe an example of one of my ill-defined meta-words, so maybe they're close to one and the same thing, and that's what I'm interested in exploring.
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