When did people start....

[MelissaBaby]

Bar Harbor is gorgeous! (Well, it was 50 hears ago.) Superb seafood.

Somewhere once told me Maine was like Scotland, but with more trees and fewer sheep, better food and worse liquor.

 

[PapaRomantic]

Not sure about that, I'm on the East Coast and it's always been standing in line that I say and hear.

I've seen three sites within a quick two-minute search (yeah, I know, just because it's on the internet doesn't necessarily make it true) that say it's common in the Northeast, but they also take it down to mostly New York, and the article I've linked from Dictionary.com also adds New Jersey.

"On Line" vs. "In Line"

 

[JuanSeiszFitzHall]

Oh! "take a meeting" instead of "have a meeting."

Ahem. Permit me to express my extreme age, and my long-ago connection to the bottom level of show business. 'Take a meeting' is what one did with one or more other people in order to finance, produce, and advertise an entertainment-industry product. More recently, this event has been known as a pitch meeting. Maybe the best usage of 'take a meeting' was in a (PARIAH WARNING) Woody Allen film (I think "Annie Hall"), as a running gag during a Hollywood party. A few guys chat about X taking a meeting with Y, if Y will take a meeting with Z, etc. A later look-in on them has them referring to W, with one of them saying, "He gives great meeting." What most viewers probably remember from the party scene is the moment when a man is on the phone, mournfully saying, "I forgot my mantra." If memory serves, that was the launch of the career of Jeff Goldblum.

 

[lovecraft68]

He lure them in with the scenic beauty and the winter sports and the delicious seafood, then we unleash the ticks and mosquitoes and black flies.

My wife spent two years in Maine for a business her and two friends were trying to start up. She lived in "OOB' and her comment was that it was the product of generations of inbreeding because one brother fucking his sister could not have caused all that.

 

[MelissaBaby]

My wife spent two years in Maine for a business her and two friends were trying to start up. She lived in "OOB' and her comment was that it was the product of generations of inbreeding because one brother fucking his sister could not have caused all that.

I'd dispute that. My theory is that half the local population of OOB (Old Orchard Beach, for those not blessed to be New Englanders) was fathered by tourists from Quebec.

 

[old_prof]

My wife spent two years in Maine for a business her and two friends were trying to start up. She lived in "OOB' and her comment was that it was the product of generations of inbreeding because one brother fucking his sister could not have caused all that.

Do not hold OOB against Maine. It's the bastard child of New Hamster and Quebec. And yes, it draws very heavily from Quebec.

You need to get a little further north to find any real Maine.

I lived in mid-coast Maine for 5 years and owned land a little further up the coast for 30 years, but I was never a real Mainer. (I hate to think of the character @MelissaBaby would have made me in one of her stories.)

 

[lovecraft68]

I'd dispute that. My theory is that half the local population of OOB (Old Orchard Beach, for those not blessed to be New Englanders) was fathered by tourists from Quebec.

Were the tourists siblings?

 

[Britva415]

Do you have similar disdain for "a little bit", since you could also have both "a little" and "a bit"?

It goes without saying that "that's a little different!"

But I said it anyway

 

[Britva415]

As long as we're talking about Maine and bastardized sayings:

Sometime in the last 30 years the expression "wicked" started metastasizing to other regions. But these noobs fuck it up because it's supposed to be "wicked something" (some adjective), not just "wicked!"

It's an intensifier like "very," not an adjective like "awesome."

 

[crookedletter]

As long as we're talking about Maine and bastardized sayings:

Sometime in the last 30 years the expression "wicked" started metastasizing to other regions. But these noobs fuck it up because it's supposed to be "wicked something" (some adjective), not just "wicked!"

I’m no linguist but I think “wicked something” is also not the original usage.

Metastasizing is one word for it; evolution of language is another. Like it or not.

 

[Britva415]

I’m no linguist but I think “wicked something” is also not the original usage.

Of course not.

 

[MelissaBaby]

Do not hold OOB against Maine. It's the bastard child of New Hamster and Quebec. And yes, it draws very heavily from Quebec.

You need to get a little further north to find any real Maine.

I lived in mid-coast Maine for 5 years and owned land a little further up the coast for 30 years, but I was never a real Mainer. (I hate to think of the character @MelissaBaby would have made me in one of her stories.)

Flatlander.

We don't consider York County part of Maine. We call it North Mass.

 

[MelissaBaby]

As long as we're talking about Maine and bastardized sayings:

Sometime in the last 30 years the expression "wicked" started metastasizing to other regions. But these noobs fuck it up because it's supposed to be "wicked something" (some adjective), not just "wicked!"

It's an intensifier like "very," not an adjective like "awesome."

People who do that are wicked numb dubbers.

 

[SugarStorm]

"Stand on line" sounds like an English as Second Language speaker whose native language lacks articles.

Oi you. Bigjobs! Acting all superior with your posh articles.

 

[Britva415]

People who do that are wicked numb dubbers.

Wicked posahs

 

[AG31]

Flatlander.

We don't consider York County part of Maine. We call it North Mass.

And New Hampshire just doesn't rate a thought?????

 

[MelissaBaby]

Sure it rates a thought: make sure you've got money for the Hampton Toll Plaza on your way to Boston.

 

[Belegon]

I think "standing on line" is regional, I've been hearing it off and on for years.

I would agree with this statement

 

[old_prof]

And New Hampshire just doesn't rate a thought?????

no it doesn't, other than wishing I hadn't lived in all three states bordering it.

 

[Comshaw]

Nor has it gotten to the upper left coast. "Standing in line" it is here. Of course it could be used in other parts of the state. After all being divided by a mountain range, this state has a split personality.

Western Washington

Eastern Washington


Comshaw

 

[Kumquatqueen]

We're talking on line meaning in a queue, not online as in internet-connected, right?

Definitely not UK (we rarely talk about being in a line, either, unless it's a formation for ballet or a performance).

Judy Blume used it, including in books set just post-WWII ('Sally is first on line' from Starring Sally J Freedman as Herself). Seems to be a New York/NJ thing.

 

[Bramblethorn]

As long as we're talking about Maine and bastardized sayings:

Sometime in the last 30 years the expression "wicked" started metastasizing to other regions. But these noobs fuck it up because it's supposed to be "wicked something" (some adjective), not just "wicked!"

It's an intensifier like "very," not an adjective like "awesome."

Is that a mutation of the Mainah version, or just the long-standing British/Australian usage beginning to show up in the USA?

"Wicked" as an adjective to mean "awesome"/"cool"/etc. has been common in UK/Aus English since at least the 1980s; I was familiar with it long before I ever heard the intensifier version.

By 2000 it was mainstream enough that a particularly obnoxious van rental company adopted it for their name (Wicked Campers) and it shows up as a Ron Weasley catchphrase in the Harry Potter movies from 2001 onwards. (I don't think it's in the books?)

By now I expect it's something that would mark me as an old fogey trying to sound cool.

 

[SkyBubble]

...to say "standing on line" instead of "standing in line?"

That's a long-standing New York idiom.

 

[SkyBubble]

What? No it fucking isn't. It's "Stand in line", though a Brit would be more likely to go one of three ways:

1. Please form an orderly queue
2. Oi you! Bigjobs! Get in t'ferking queue, will ya?
3. There is a queue here, you know (followed by knowing nods and some tutting from everyone else)

It would be "Stand on the line", not "stand on line". "Stand on line" sounds like a English as Second Language speaker whose native language lacks articles.

Some wag once said that the word "queue" is just the letter q followed by four silent letters.

 

[SkyBubble]

Another thing I have slowly and grudgingly come to accept is regional and not jUsT pLaIn WrOnG is "on accident."

No, that one's just wrong. It's "by accident" or "accidentally."