Going to town with repeating expressions

by phil on Sunday Jan 18, 2009 11:34 PM
love of rhetoric, noticing little things in the media

This is now the sixth post in 15 days where I use the expression, "go to town." Does anybody else do that? Where you take up an expression, and pepper it into your conversations for like a month.

Peppering. That's a good one.

Expression. That's another good one.

Actually, George W. Bush kept saying klieg lights over the span of a couple of weeks recently:

"When I get out of here, I am getting off the stage," he said. "I have had my time in the Klieg lights."

I know he said it on his final press conference and during an TV interview recently. It was a very noticeable word usage, totally out of character for Bush. He's never used a word before that I had to look up. Here's the definition for klieg light:

A powerful carbon-arc lamp producing an intense light and used especially in making movies.

I've been saying "go to town" a bunch this month in general. But here are the six references:

• this post
  
• "It wasn't until I had a public forum to post my ideas, that I really went to town."
  
• "I really just like the way wikipedia goes to town on the entries..."
  
• "I wanted to be confident I was dreaming before going to town with the world, Grand Theft Auto-style."
  
• "My favorite blogger, Jason Kottke, went to town on the whole thing"
  
• "An anthropologist or sociologist could go to town with trying to classify the varieties of religious attitudes."

In the previous post I used the expression "take a page from," which I like. I think I might "run with it."