Talk:damn and blast

These are nothing more than their components, but might be good to illustrate in usage examples or quotes at damn, blast, and/or ass. DCDuring TALK 17:53, 5 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Actually, I think damn and blast: (and perhaps a couple of others, like bugger and blast:) is idiomatic. AFAIK, nobody would say "blast and damn" nor "damn and shit". Equinox ◑ 19:32, 5 June 2009 (UTC)


 * damn and blast is about 50% more frequent at b.g.c. than blast and damn. "blast and bugger" is about as frequent as "bugger and blast". DCDuring TALK 15:18, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete, not idiomatic, not difficult to guess the meaning, and for damn your ass surely at the very least this should be damn someone's ass - you can damn anyone's ass, right? Mglovesfun (talk) 21:00, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
 * The entry is of what is claimed to be an Interjection, but would possibly better belong under a Phrase header and categorized grammatically as Category:English imperatives with others that form independent sentences. We have several of these imperative forms, "go to hell" but not "go home". We treat shut up: in a usage notes. The only PoS header at [[shut up]] is Verb. All invective has a grammar, mostly identical to normal grammar, with a few remarkable exceptions, like -fucking- and -bloody-. I am torn as to how to present these. If they are deleted, users will reinsert them. Blocking the entry might be an option, but makes us seem prudish. One or more appendices on invective, oaths, euphemisms, and similar subjects with lists of common non-idiomatic collocations and a lot of entries using would be my long-term preference.
 * Redirects seem the best alternative at the moment. DCDuring TALK 23:39, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
 * But to what? damn? Probably, but why not blast for the second one. A page can't redirect to multiple pages. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:05, 13 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep damn and blast as a strongly set phrase (yes, I would keep hell and damnation too). Delete or conceivably redirect damn your ass.  Adequately covered by your ass.  Er, so to speak. -- Visviva 13:52, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
 * If it were really "set", why so many "blast and damn"s. There is clearly a productive grammar of invective by which terms like this are formed. I'm not sure that such grammar is well covered in CGEL (Damn their eyes!), but a grammar it is. I'll have to see if I can get a hint of that grammar from The "F" Word, 3rd edition. 2009. Delete. DCDuring TALK 17:48, 16 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Well, that is odd. But something peculiar is going on with the b.g.c. counts.  The hits for "blast and damn" run out at 388.  The hits for "damn and blast" run out at 400.  "That's odd", said I, so I tested "damn"; the hits ran out at 341. :-/
 * For a second opinion, I turned to the BNC; it gives 14 hits for "damn and blast" vs. 1 chance collocation for "blast and damn". (COCA yields 1 and 0, confirming Britishness).  Absent further evidence, it seems setphraseish.  If our invective coverage ever gets up to snuff, I daresay we can find some useful things to say about it.
 * Per the lemming test, I note that Partridge has an entry for this. Actually three entries; one for the interjection and one each for a noun and a verb that bear further investigation. -- Visviva 02:44, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Doing the search from the US gives me 19 hits for "damn and blast" and more than a hundred for "blast and damn". Not a single one in the damn/blast order is after 1922. On News the ratio is 10:1, so perhaps the order is becoming set. Is 5:1 an adequate threshold of setness of order? DCDuring TALK 12:13, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Sorry. I had done the bgc search with "full text only". I can reproduce my earlier results on relative frequency on US bgc. Subtracting the Partridge/Oxford mentions and "God damn and blast" makes it even more nearly equal. DCDuring TALK 12:22, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Deleted damn your ass. Less of a consensus for the former. Keep going. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:51, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Kept the former as a no consensus. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:08, 16 December 2009 (UTC)