Timeline for all fire and toe
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
16 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jun 8, 2020 at 18:15 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | @FF The lens throws out novel nouns, verbs etc to facilitate the discussion of non-Terran species, practices. Much like SF writers themselves, only Smith passes the buck. | |
| Jun 8, 2020 at 17:48 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | @EdwinAshworth: I'm not sure I'm saying anything here, apart from that I believe the toe in OP's example derives from brimstone (deliberately / knowingly or otherwise). I seriously doubt there's any real case for calling the cited usage an (established) "expression", but I didn't think I'd explicitly made that point anywhere above. As for the Lensman novels, I think I read them all as a teenager, but I doubt I've looked at one in the past 50 years. | |
| Jun 8, 2020 at 16:55 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | @FF Are you saying that 'dexitroboper' must be discounted? Does lens-invention not count as word formation? | |
| Jun 8, 2020 at 15:45 | comment | added | Rusty Brooklyn | Much obliged for the heavy lifting. At this juncture, seems I should seek somebody who knows it by ear, not by eye. Gonna grab the phone and dial up East Texas. I'll report findings. Thanks again. | |
| Jun 8, 2020 at 15:42 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | @user121863: Don't assume too much! The fact that one or two people wrote it doesn't even prove that anyone ever actually said it. Sometimes writers either misremember (or never accurately heard) certain usage. Other times they'll deliberately write something they've never encountered before, simply because it "feels" like an appropriate "colloquialism" in some narrative context. Consider the kind of "invented slang" usages you might find in a sci-fi novel, for example, where sometimes we can be quite certain some expression we've just read doesn't "exist" (as past/present slang). | |
| Jun 8, 2020 at 14:58 | comment | added | user 66974 | @EdwinAshworth -I am not from Texas or that par of America but I have the impression that it is or was used given that someone took the pain to put it down in writing. | |
| Jun 8, 2020 at 14:20 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | @EdwinAshworth: I agree it's a bit ott to say 'the expression does exist'. But we have found three written instances - all effectively for the same "variation on a theme" (and all likely to be considerably more durable than a comment on ELU! :) | |
| Jun 8, 2020 at 13:49 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | @user121863 'the expression does exist' is disingenuous. It implies a 'known and used' quantity which one Google hit fails to endorse. 'Colorless puce furiously sleeping ideologies' will probably register after today. But it's not an expression. | |
| Jun 8, 2020 at 13:00 | history | edited | FumbleFingers | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
mistletoe?
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| Jun 8, 2020 at 12:58 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | @user121863: I think that 1834 letter I found later is far more significant, because it specifically mentions both toe and brimstone. I've no idea why I wrote mistletoe originally. (But I guess I'm bound to value that more highly, simply because it backs up my "armchair etymologist" ideas! :) | |
| Jun 8, 2020 at 12:33 | comment | added | user 66974 | The interesting part of your answer is the finding of the expression "She's all fire and toe, ain't she?“ which tells me that the expression does exist, however localized in time and space. | |
| Jun 8, 2020 at 12:06 | history | edited | FumbleFingers | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 371 characters in body
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| Jun 8, 2020 at 12:00 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | I'd have been quite prepared to accept that as yet another euphemistic alternative (except Google Books doesn't have a single recorded instance of those three words occurring together, let alone preceded by all and applied to a person! :) | |
| Jun 8, 2020 at 11:51 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | Samphire and mistletoe? | |
| Jun 8, 2020 at 11:50 | history | edited | FumbleFingers | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 173 characters in body
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| Jun 8, 2020 at 11:42 | history | answered | FumbleFingers | CC BY-SA 4.0 |