End of ADS-L Digest - 6 Apr 1997 to 7 Apr 1997
**********************************************

Subject: ADS-L Digest - 7 Apr 1997 to 8 Apr 1997

There are 12 messages totalling 286 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

 1. Tipping
 2. poor whites
 3. tipping
 4. Tipping -Reply
 5. tipping -Reply
 6. Alan Thomas
 7. Intrusive L (was Re: ADS-L Digest)
 8. used to could
 9. Not exactly double modals
 10. Etymologizing (2)
 11. Fw: Not exactly double modals

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:  Tue, 8 Apr 1997 07:20:39 -0400
From:  Leslie Dunkling <106407.3560[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]COMPUSERVE.COM>
Subject: Tipping

The supposed acronymic origin of tip (in its gratuity sense) is an old
chestnut. It ranks with the `port out starboard home' explanation of posh.
As Larry Horn implies, fanciful nonsense is often more appealing than
etymological fact.

There is a good summary of the various developments of tip in Partridge's
_Dictionary of Historical Slang_. Although there are several coincidental
connections with tippling, one did not derive from the other.

By the way, _Tavern Anecdotes and Sayings_, by Charles Hindley, (1881)
glosses tippling as "holding communication with disembottled spirits." And
the subject of tipping recalls Groucho Marx in A Night at the Opera asking
the steward whether tipping is allowed. When told that it is he says "Have
you got two fives?" "Oh, yes, sir." "Then you won't need the ten cents I
was going to give you."

(And as for rule of thumb, wasn't the breadth of a man's thumb formerly
used as a rough and ready measure of one inch?)