Date: Thu, 14 Sep 1995 09:47:54 EDT From: Larry Horn Subject: with a bullet OK, now that we've settled the English Only dispute and the issues of meta- theses and related non-standard pronunciations and consonant cluster simplification, I wonder if it's time to introduce a new topic. Can anyone help me pin down the above? I did check a few recent slang dictionaries (and regular ones) to no avail, although one contained a related verb in a citation from the Rolling Stone about a song that was "bulleting its way to the top of the charts". I think the first uses I recall involved "No. n with a bullet", and I understood them to mean something like "No n. [on the charts, said of a popular song] but moving up rapidly". This would then constitute an instance of D.J. lingo, but where did it start? Does this 'bullet' have anything to do with the kind that shoots, or with the typographic symbol (Opt-8 on my Mac keyboard)? Is the use expanding to different contexts? (There was a subhead in Tuesday's N. Y. Times reading "Giants and Jets: 0-4 with a bullet", which I interpreted as meaning that the teams' combined 0-4 record was likely to be- come even worse.) Can anyone help? (I did notice it wasn't in DARE, but then it may not count as a specialized regional use.) Larry