Date:  Sun, 30 Apr 1995 21:25:27 EDT

From:  Larry Horn <LHORN[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]YALEVM.CIS.YALE.EDU>

Subject: Cross-post: on n X short of a Y



Hi y'all. I just noticed this posting on Linguist--



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Date: Sat, 29 Apr 1995 7:55:56 -0700 (PDT)

From: SILVER[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]sonoma.edu

Subject: Recently created idioms



In my introductory semantics class we've been talking about semantic and

grammatical models speakers use to create new idioms. A student came

up with an amusing one a friend of hers presumably created on his own:

"three french fries short of a happy meal" --also "a sandwich short of

a picnic". Does anyone know if these have currency, or can they be

more or less considered unique creations?

Shirley Silver

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Now, besides my sense that the latter (although not the former, which does

strike me as a nice novel extension of the pattern) is already lexicalized, as

it were, I seem to recall that we were kicking around quite a few other

instances of this model a while back. Does anyone have (or can they

reconstruct) a list of them for Shirley Silver (or for me, and I can repackage

them for her). The first one I recall is 'three bricks shy of a load'.



Larry