Date: Tue, 28 Oct 1997 16:51:29 -0500

From: "Donald M. Lance" engdl[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]SHOWME.MISSOURI.EDU

Subject: Re: Rat's -ss



(If so, research needed, unless someone turns up a written treatment.)



Maybe there's a military tie-in, as was suggested on the list last night --

dictionaries of slang and the like list a lot of miltary expressions that

contain "rat."



Maybe unrelated (???) is the British expression "rat-arsed," meaning really

drunk, which goes back to around 1980 or so.



Where is Barry Popik now that we need him? His informational input far

exceeded his personal commentaries, but ads-lers didn't respond to his

implicit lexico-dialectal questions as diligently as they have to a couple

of emotional items in recent days.