Comedian Joan Rivers dies at 81

[T-Bird]

I saw her just 3 years ago while in New York City, she was a last minute replacement on the Dave Letterman Show. I hate to hear she has died as I would any one, but I have to say I never did care for her comedy. My wife and I both were disappointed to find out she replaced Nicole Kidman on the night of the show...RIP

[Willow]

I too did not have a real appreciation for her comedy, but it is sad to see the famous adults of my youth slipping away.

The end of the line gets closer, doesn't it?

[old2soon]

Sometimes I laughed with her. Other times I scratched my head and mumbled-W T F?? Any day you walk on the lawn and are not part of the lawn is a good day. May she rest in peace. RIDE SAFE.

[Rams]

My sympathies and condolences go out to her family and loved ones.    

[RainMaker]

Terrible way to go - snafu on a medical procedure, probably elective.  Prayers for her family.

[weeder]

   Good riddance.

 


'Riddance' is now so completely associated with this little phrase that it is rarely, if ever, seen out alone. The only sort of riddance on offer these days is a good one. It wasn't always thus. In the 16th century a riddance was a general-purpose noun and meant 'deliverance from' or 'getting rid of'. The first adjectives to be linked with the word were fayre/happy/gladsome and, in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, 1600, Portia wishes the Prince of Morocco 'a gentle riddance'.

A very early use of riddance comes in John Rastell's poem, Away Mourning, circa 1525:


I haue her lost,
For all my cost,
Yet for all that I trowe
I haue perchaunce,
A fayre ryddaunce,
And am quyt of a shrew.

Shakespeare appears to be the coiner of 'good riddance', in Troilus and Cressida, 1606:


Thersites: I will see you hanged, like clotpoles, ere I come any more to your tents: I will keep where there is wit stirring and leave the faction of fools.
[Exits]
Patroclus: A good riddance.


The phrase is often extended and emphasized as 'good riddance to bad rubbish' or, as that extended form was first coined, 'good riddance of bad rubbish'. Tobias Smollett used the phrase in a none too friendly comment, in The Critical Review, 1805:


But we are sorry ... to consider Mr. Pratt's writings as 'purely evil' ... we should really look upon this author's departure from the world of literature as a good riddance of bad rubbish.

Good riddanceThe American journalist and member of President Andrew Jackson's 'Kitchen Cabinet', Francis Preston Blair, wrote an editorial in The Extra Globe, 1841. In this he appears to have been the first to use the precise version of the phrase that is most commonly used now:

[Bighead]

Weeder you smokin?