<p>Why do we say “pulled” an all nighter? Or “pulled” a _____? It was bothering me lol, anyone know the answer?</p>
<p>Just like people say: Take a listen, take a seat etc.</p>
<p>Weird, eh… I am taking a history of language class this summer and we study, among other things, how many phrases come into being…</p>
<p>This is the English slanguage; who knows? Why are boxing rings square? Why is there no ham in a hamburger? Why is the plural of tooth teeth, but the plural of booth is booths, not beeth? Why do we ‘fill out’ forms when we’re techincally filling them in? Why doesn’t shoe rhyme with foe?</p>
<p>Nobody knows. lol.</p>
<p>I think using “pull” emphasizes the fact that pulling an all nighter is somewhat of an undertaking. As for taking a seat, I think “taking” just refers to one’s action of subtracting one from the total number of un-sat in seats.</p>
<p>In response to starcrossed
I don’t know if thats true. I’m not asking why is something the way it is… well sort of, I’m not asking why something just is like “why is this table a table?” I’m asking something the I’m sure can be explained by someone who knows a thing or two about languages =) If no one knows I’ll ask my Latin teacher on Tuesday when we get back to school lol</p>
<p>starcrossed:</p>
<p>Nice! Here I was thinking I was able to shed light on most people’s queries about the English language. Guess not :]</p>
<p>I wish my school had Latin. It is the #5 reason I want to go to BS.</p>
<p>Knowing a thing or two about languages won’t necessarily help you, because “pulling an all-nighter” is essentially a slang phrase. It’s not like you can anaylze the prefixes or the suffixes or something. </p>
<p>I was just making a joke about the…outrageous nature of the English language, all of which is completely true, but slang is another world all together. lol. It’s a completely different dimension than “why is this a table?”</p>
<p>Slang is far more fascinating that language itself, if you ask me. I mean, think about all the things you say daily that are basically slang? How interesing is that?</p>
<p>Yes, but a language teacher/ someone who has studied languages would much better understand the way in which languages evolve/slang and could undoubtedly explain it better than any of us</p>