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USAGE: idioms with variable objects (was: deeply embedded VSOnightmare)

From:Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...>
Date:Saturday, October 27, 2001, 3:27
John Cowan wrote:
> I think that Russian has an idiom of the form "The devil's grandmother > knows X", where X is an event, and meaning that X is obscure, > incomprehensible, or generally f****-ed up.
"God knows ___" ("The Lord knows", "Who knows" being variants) in English, e.g., "Who knows how he came up with *that* idea." I'm never sure whether to write a question mark or a period with that idiom. The "who" makes me want to put a question mark, and yet, it's not spoken in a question intonation. Most people I've seen write it with a period (if they use punctuation at all, of course) -- "No just cause can be advanced by terror" ICQ: 18656696 AIM Screen-Name: NikTaylor42