Thursday, May 2, 2019

Chuck Grassley, "Here's where we are."


Commenters at Diogenes' Middle Finger appreciated this. They say things like "Mic drop." The post is titled "I can't stop laughing, Grassley murdered the media and slowly walked away." 

They always overstate things. Grassley didn't murder the media. They're still alive. And kicking. And screaming. And dissembling, misinforming, propagandizing, agitating, being obnoxious, lowering their own worth.

The jig is up. 

Some people think the phrase is the gig is up.

Both forms can be grammatically correct for different reasons.

It's always a bit surprising when the small words have so many meanings. Then again, in all languages the most common words become the irregulars. That's why you shouldn't balk at all the common words not fitting the pattern. And that makes sense because so many people are using them the most they're bound to be the ones twisted the most, over time they're accepted irregulars, and their irregularity becomes regular.

Jig is a fast dance, it's also a trick. 

So those are two terms that could be the basis of the saying. The dance is up, or the trick is discovered and finished.

Jig is also a device to hold a project in place to be worked on, sawed or drilled such as a miter box,  so the pieces all match and fit together when assembled.

Jig is a spinning lure that wobbles when pulled through the water.

Jig is a device that separated ore or coal from waste material by agitation in water, a gravity separator. 

jigsaw with a thin blade designed for cutting arbitrary curves such as made in jigsaw puzzles with knobs and spaces for knobs in each piece. 

jig or jigging is also a term for truancy.

jig is an undesirable restless on the spot trotting motion of a horse.

* The name of a film
* The name of a band
* The name of children's card game game snip snap snorem
* The goblin protagonist of fantasy novels by Jim C. Hines
* The name of a strategy game published by dubl-Click Software for the Newton MessagePad
* It's an insulting phrase for black people shortened from jigaboo.
* The name of a 1951 hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean
* The name of one of the sectors of Gold Beach during WWII Normandy landings. 
* It's the phonetic for the letter J in the Joint Army/Navy Phonetic Alphabet
* Jig Theater, either dramatic or farce jig, a short comic afterpiece in the playhouses of 16th and17th century England.
* Jig Dog, nickname for Rear Admiral James Ramage, American naval aviator 


2 comments:

Dad Bones said...

I used to bale hay with Chuck and he always said the jig is up to get us back to work after polishing off his mom's baloney sandwiches and Kool Aid. Actually I've never met him but he, like myself, probably heard that expression frequently back in the fifties.

Trooper York said...

The Jig is up is what David French and Bill Kristol say when their wife's boyfriend is ready to cuck them.