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From: cowan@ccil.org (John Cowan)
Subject: [TUHS] who is "Veigh S. Meer"?
Date: Thu, 16 Jul 2015 17:15:02 -0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <4a3eb197576c3793420c2a2dbf9eb892.squirrel@www.ccil.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <alpine.BSF.2.11.1507170701060.92212@aneurin.horsfall.org>

Scripsit Dave Horsfall:

> On Thu, 16 Jul 2015, John Cowan wrote:
>
>> The punning pseudonym,
>
> Call me slow, but can someone please explain the joke?  If it's American
> humo[u]r, then remember that I'm British/Australian...

It represents a phonetic respelling of Yiddish "vey iz mir", corresponding
etymologically to German "Weh ist mir" and English "woe is me", but more
idiomatically to "Oh, no!", expressing despair.

-- 





  reply	other threads:[~2015-07-16 21:15 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 10+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2015-07-16 15:48 Deborah Scherrer
2015-07-16 20:17 ` John Cowan
2015-07-16 20:27   ` Deborah Scherrer
2015-07-16 21:04   ` Dave Horsfall
2015-07-16 21:15     ` John Cowan [this message]
2015-07-16 23:31     ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2015-07-17  5:25     ` Dave Horsfall
2015-07-16 22:21 Norman Wilson
2015-07-16 22:29 ` John Cowan
2015-07-21  1:18 Doug McIlroy

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