Typo in Partridge
Posted by R. Berg on November 07, 2001
In Reply to: "Hell out of Dodge" from archive posted by masakim on November 06, 2001
: : : can someone tell me the origin of this phrase? "Get the hell out of dodge"
: : Typing "dodge" into the Search box produced a previous answer:
: : : Does anyone know where the expression "Get the Hell out of Dodge" comes from? I assume an old western movie or television show. Please let me know... Thanks
: : It refers to a real place. (See below.) I don't know if someone
actually said it or if it's a movie cliche. I couldn't find it in
my movie quotes books. Anyone?
: : www.dodgecity.org/ framesets/history_frameset.html
: : "Dodge City is a pure definition of the West... a gateway to
history that began with the opening of the Santa Fe Train by William
Becknell in 1821 and became a great commercial route between Franklin,
Missouri and Santa Fe, New Mexico until 1880. Thousands of wagons
traveled the Mountain Branch of the trail which went west from Dodge
City along the north bank of the Arkansas River into Colorado."
: *who wouldn't sell a farm and go to sea?* or *who'd* (or *whoo'll*)
*sell his farm and go to sea?*
: These are nautically synon. c.pp. spoken when something very unpleasant
or extremely difficult has to be done. ...
: 'Varied, in the US, to _who wouldn't sell out and the ship out?_
or _!_ Meaning "to lidiquate all one's assetts and take them away,
going as far as possible." Or more vulgarly, _it's time to get the
**** out of Dodge_, ori. a ref. to Dodge, a city in Nebraska, and
_Dodge City_, one ine Kansas. Both were frontier towns (forts, at
first) in American migrations to the West' (A.B., 1979)
: From Dictionary of Catch Phrases: American and British, from the Sixteenth Century to the Present Day, by
Eric Partridge & Paule Beale
: ----------
: If you don't want to stay here, then get the hell out of Dodge.
(_American Speech_, 1970)
: Time to get the hell out of Dodge. (M. Baker, _Nam_, 1980)
My copy of Partridge/Beale also has "Who wouldn't sell out and the ship out?" Most likely this should be ". . . and then ship out?" The book is riddled with one-letter errors. "A.B." is Prof. Anthony Brown, apparently a correspondent of Partridge's.