Tuesday, February 23, 2010

The Linguistics Of Urine

A nice discussion of the origin of the phrase piss poor over at The Grammarphobia blog. Money Quote:

The word "piss" here is "an intensifier, usually implying excess or undesirability," according to the Oxford English Dictionary. The usage originated in the United States in the mid-20th century.

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TV Linguistics - Pronouncify.com and the fictional Princeton Linguistics department

 [reposted from 11/20/10] I spent Thursday night on a plane so I missed 30 Rock and the most linguistics oriented sit-com episode since ...