Tuesday, September 28, 2004

Phrase of the day

Down with

I am completely confused with this phrase. I recently received an email that was sent to a list that is called, "downwithdubya@..." Since the topic was on tickets to a Michael Moore appearance, I assumed that this was an anti-Bush crowd, and the phrase is used in the same spirit of "down with the capitalist roadster." However, I then recalled the song by the rap group, "Naughty by Nature," "You down with OPP (yeah you know me.)" Although OPP may have been short for OPPression, my readingof the lyrics only made the confusion worse. dictionary.com really didn't help niether:

  1. Depose, do away with, as in Down with the king! This imperative dates from the early 1500s.

  2. be or get down with. Be close friends with, as in I'm down with that crowd. [Slang; late 1900s]

So is this "downwithdubya" group a left leaning bush-basher that hope to depose the 43rd president, or are they really just tight with the President, and are planning to ambush MM at his own tuff? These are the things that keep me up at night.

posted by hedgehog @ 1:02 PM

1 Comments:

At 7:31 AM, Blogger h said...

Hey, I never noticed that! You're right. English slang is just filled with these reverse expressions. Like "That's bad!" can be construed as "That's cool!". Anything that is "very [blank]" may be expressed in connection with Hell, as in "hella [blank]"--and this is a good thing?!! How is an ESL student or my grandma to survive on the streets?

btw can you change my link to peacefulrise.blogspot.com?

 

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