Just a smidge

I LOVE THE MOVIE "Rio Bravo" with John Wayne, Dean Martin and Walter Brennan, but there's something that always bothers me. Near the end, Brennan wonders rhetorically if it'd be all right if he got cleaned up a smidge and went out for a drink. "That wouldn't hurt me none, would it?"

Would someone in the 1880s have used the word smidge? I had my doubts.

Still, it's possible. I looked up smidgen (which has since been shortened to smidge). It apparently comes from the English smitch and first was used around 1845.

So it's very possible that smidge was used correctly.

THE SEARCH, BY the way, led me to something interesting: The OneLook Dictionary Search. I'll use that again.

Contact: Reach me at tgilli52@gmail.com or nc3022@yahoo.com.

More EDITOR@WORK blog entries

• You really DO need an editor

• Reminders for would-be novelists

• What I do when I'm editing

• What I charge (it's a deal) and what I edit

• Slogging through the Internet

• J-school: More eyes on your stories

• J-school: Go out and learn

• Rookie mistakes for magazine writers

Entries from The Dog Blog

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• Growl and pull

• 10 years with Lady

• ... said the spider to ...

• The Dog Diary (2014)

• YIP! YIP! The stereo-sound huskies

• What Lady and Michael Jackson had in common

Blog entries from The Auto Racing Journal

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(a book of great stories about the Intimidator)

• Then Junior Said to Jeff...

(the book of great NASCAR stories)

• My best day as a sports writer

• Jeff Gordon's milk toast to Dale Earnhardt

• Wayne Auton: A life in racing

More blog entries by Tom Gillispie

• Resume for a writer and editor

• An editor's views on powerful writing

• Advice for be and would-be novelists

• Links to TG's stories online

• Favorite quotes

• What I do when I'm editing

Anecdotes by Tom Gillispie

• Wipeout at Death Valley

• Days with rainbows

• A desperate writer working in the dark

• Yer outta there!