Opinion: Zimmer ankles Welch as Safire wannabe
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Remember that whole unpleasant business about the Hollywood-newspaper verb, ‘to ankle’? Benjamin Zimmer has provided the definitive (and corrective) word. Sample:
The origin of the perambulatory sense of ankle, later extended in show business to quitting or getting fired, is not entirely obvious. We could compare it to other names of body parts that get applied to walking or running by the process of synecdoche, as in the expressions leg it, foot it, and hoof it. Ankles, however, seem like an odd anatomical choice, despite the historical presence of colloquialisms for bipedal motion such as ankle express (in HDAS and DARE) and ankle-cart (in ‘A Word List From Southeast Arkansas,’ AmSp, Feb. 1938, in the expression ‘Hitch up your ankle-cart’).