| 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 |
In a couple of notes recently I have seen "Here! Here!" used to
indicate strong agreement with a previous comment. I always thought
"Here! Here!" was the way to call your dog; and that "Hear! Hear!",
meaning something like "that was worth listening to", was the
expression.
But then, I've never seen it in writing before. Which is correct?
Where (here?) does this expression come from?
| T.R | Title | User | Personal Name | Date | Lines |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 305.1 | . | PSTJTT::TABER | Who hates vice hates man | Tue Jan 20 1987 16:49 | 13 |
"Hear! Hear!" is correct. Most often heard in the House of Parliament (GB) and the houses of P. for most countries that were once colonies. (The US has a congress, and so they don't shout "Hear! Hear!" here.) It is a shortening of "All hear" which is old-time for "that was worth listening to" as you suspected. The reason it gets screwed up is probably one of two possibilities: (1) people using it have never seen it in writing before, (2) people using it HAVE seen it in writing before, but are letting their fingers type faster than their brains think. (Which explains intelligent people writing "there" for "their" or "to" for "two" which I have noticed in many notes files.) >>>==>PStJTT | |||||
| 305.2 | (cheers) | ECLAIR::GOODENOUGH | Jeff Goodenough, IPG Reading-UK | Wed Jan 21 1987 07:56 | 11 |
Incidentally, a burst of "Hear, hear" in the House is transcribed
in the proceedings (Hansard) as "(cheers)". Members are much too
polite to shout "Hooray", so shout this instead. So, at least in
the House it has two meanings: "I agree with what you say" and
"I say, what a jolly good show".
Other parenthesised comments are: (laughter), (jeers), and (cries
of "Shame!"). I'm not sure about (jeers) - maybe that's a subset
of (laughter).
Jeff.
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| 305.3 | How to coin a phrase | GOBLIN::MCVAY | Pete McVay, VRO (Telecomm) | Wed Jan 21 1987 12:21 | 4 |
re: .2
And then there's the marvelous invention by Richard Nixon's editors--
"Expletive deleted".
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| 305.4 | HUDSON::HAMER | Thu Jan 22 1987 08:41 | 6 | ||
A grisly variation of "expletive deleted" is practiced by the National Transportation Safety Board when they transcribe the cockpit conversations of doomed aircraft. Such as: "'Look out for that <non-pertinent word> mountain!!' (sound of impact)" John H. | |||||