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Conference thebay::joyoflex

Title:The Joy of Lex
Notice:A Notes File even your grammar could love
Moderator:THEBAY::SYSTEM
Created:Fri Feb 28 1986
Last Modified:Mon Jun 02 1997
Last Successful Update:Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:1192
Total number of notes:42769

278.0. ""Puts me in mind of"" by BAEDEV::RECKARD () Fri Nov 21 1986 12:23

    A reply to another note included the phrase: "puts me in mind of".
    Now this is, I'm sure, understood by all, but I was struck, for
    the first time, of its oddness.
    - It's putting you where?  "In mind of"?
    
    Can someone parse this phrase, or give some kind of genealogy?
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278.1Mark Twain?DRAGON::MCVAYPete McVay, VRO (Telecomm)Fri Nov 21 1986 13:096
    I looked through my complete anthology, but I can't locate it. 
    I could SWEAR that Samuel Clemens a.k.a. Twain said it somewhere.
    
    One quote that does come to mind: "I must have a prodigious amount
    of memory, considering the amount of time it takes me to make it
    all up."  (From 'An American Abroad')
278.2Results of dictionary searchSUPER::MATTHEWSDon't panicFri Nov 21 1986 22:1418
    To "have in mind" or "bear in mind" is to have in one's memory, to
    remember. To "put [a person] in mind of" is to remind someone, to cause
    that person to remember. 
    
    The OED, which provides the earliest known instance of each word or
    phrase, quotes one Jehan Palsgrave, 1530: "I will put hym in mynde of
    his promesse." 
    
    The OED says this may have developed from an obsolete usage, to
    "come [a person] in mind," to occur to one's recollection. It quotes
    Chaucer in 1374: "And every word gan up and down to wynde, That
    he hadde seyd as it come her to mynde."
                   
    The American Heritage lists this usage as "informal," while the
    OED does not.
    
    					Val