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notfromhere said:
Is its origin known?
The term "out of pocket" has a long-standing formal use, of course. It is an unreimbursed expense, something paid for out of personal funds.
"Even though my dental plan theoretically cover two visits to the hygienist a year, I had to pay for my last cleaning out of pocket since my prior visit had been less than six months earlier."
It seems to me unlikely that slang uses of "out of pocket," which also include, incidentally, the notion of "having a wild hair," or "getting crazy," came into being independently of this use. These are probably instances of phrasal malapropism which achieved standardization as meme viruses among certain speech communities. Sometimes people just throw unexamined figures of speech that stick in their ear into their conversation as a kind of semantic wild card. The transmission of meaning comes more from the supporting context than from the adapted figure of speech.
During the 1970's computer boom, the insiders used the term "out of pocket" to mean off the grid, out of the loop or unreachable. In the west and midwest the term is literal in meaning for the most part. It means out of the office. If however, in the southwest, if one is out of the office but has one's cell phone and laptop, they are still "in pocket."
I was a Military wife for many years, in Germany and at West Point in the eighties and early nineties. I never heard that term. I frequently heard the term "cheese eater" which means apple polisher, brown noser. Does anyone know the origin of that term?
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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