Post by Baar Baar Jinx on Apr 26, 2020 21:29:49 GMT
Rosa has his characters say, "Not by a jugful!"; is that something Barks used? I don't recall hearing it anywhere else. He also has had Scrooge yell, "Come at me, ya' monkey(s)!"; that must be a quote from an old movie, but I don't know which one.
Speaking of Rosa, in researching my timeline I found quite a few instances of his Scrooge using "Great balls of fire!" as an exclamation -- which is not something you usually hear the Ducks say. The earliest reference to the phrase that I could find was the name of a song by Jerry Lewis, released in November of 1957. Who know Scrooge was such a hep cat?
Speaking of Rosa, in researching my timeline I found quite a few instances of his Scrooge using "Great balls of fire!" as an exclamation -- which is not something you usually hear the Ducks say. The earliest reference to the phrase that I could find was the name of a song by Jerry Lewis, released in November of 1957. Who know Scrooge was such a hep cat?
According to phrases.org.uk the expression originated in the American south around 1850 and became more well known in 1939 after being used in Gone with the Wind.
The hillbilly comic strip character Snuffy Smith—who enjoyed an explosion of popularity in the mid-1930s after his debut in Barney Google—popularized "Great balls of fire," "Time's a-wasting," "shiftless skunk," and "bodacious" (all of these usually written in some level of countrified dialect).
While none of the expressions seem to have originated with Snuffy, all were much more popular by World War II than they had been previously.
Rosa has his characters say, "Not by a jugful!"; is that something Barks used? I don't recall hearing it anywhere else. He also has had Scrooge yell, "Come at me, ya' monkey(s)!"; that must be a quote from an old movie, but I don't know which one.
I was referring to "fishes". In proper Canadian, British and American English, the correct plural of "fish" is "fish".
Fishes is an acceptable plural of "fish" according to the OED, though it lists the "usual" plural form as "fish". Nowadays "fishes" (according to American Heritage Dictionary) is mostly used when you're talking about two or more kinds or species of fish. But "fishes" was formerly used as the plural more generally. Many people used to be familiar with "fishes" from the King James Version of the Bible, specifically from the well-known story of the feeding of the 5000, where the boy offers his lunch of "five loaves and two fishes". That translation was maintained in the British "New English Bible" (1971), but dropped in e.g. the Revised Standard Version and the New American Bible which use the translation "two fish" or "a couple of fish".
So, no need to apologize for your grammar when you exclaim, "Ye cats and little fishes!"
Yes. And "fishes" is still the most common way to refer to "more than one species of fish". So, it IS Kosher, after all.
I remember Barks' Scrooge saying, "Great Caesar's Ghost, Donald!", but I can't remember which story.
"Great Caesar's Ghost!" was a common phrase when I was young. Several fictional characters used it in mass media. I remember it most from Eugene Pallette, a popular American character Hollywood movie actor from the late 1920s through the early '50s, and Perry White, publisher of "The Daily Planet", major newspaper in "Superman" comic books, for whom Superman's alter-ego, Clark Kent, worked. John (Rummel) Hamilton, the actor who played White, in the US 1950s live action Superman TV series, used that phrase whenever he was surprised in the TV episodes, but never in other TV shows or films on which he worked. Whereas, the prolific Pallette, in scores of different films, playing many, many different characters, ALWAYS used that phrase when surprised. So, I am guessing that that was not only his "calling card" phrase, but that he also used it all the time in his private life.