{"id":38620,"date":"2018-06-05T11:06:57","date_gmt":"2018-06-05T16:06:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=38620"},"modified":"2018-06-05T15:47:57","modified_gmt":"2018-06-05T20:47:57","slug":"stoop-to-no-lengths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=38620","title":{"rendered":"Stoop to no lengths"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Alex Isenstadt, \"<a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/story\/2018\/06\/04\/donald-trump-really-angry-democrats-warning-622618\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Trump warns supporters about 'really angry' Democrats<\/a>\", <em>Politico<\/em> 6\/4\/2018:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">President Donald Trump on Monday afternoon marked 500 days in office by grimly warning supporters that Democrats are motivated to turn out for the midterm elections \u2014 and that they\u2019re \u201creally, really angry.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">During a national conference call with grassroots supporters to commemorate the 500-day milestone, Trump implored his backers not to become complacent ahead of the November elections because Democrats were determined to roll back his first-term accomplishments.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">\u201cIt\u2019s very important that they come out now for the midterms. Historically, they tend not to. They get a little complacent, I guess. Something happens and they tend not to. But it\u2019s going to be very important because they are angry, the other side is really, really angry. And <strong>they stoop to no lengths<\/strong>. It\u2019s an incredible thing we\u2019re witnessing,\u201d the president said on the 15-minute call, which was organized by the White House Office of Political Affairs.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>MWM sent in the link and asked whether <em>stoop to no lengths<\/em> \"is misnegation, or what?\"<\/p>\n<p>My feeling is that it's a kind of multi-idiom blend, combining at least influences from<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>the sense of <em>stoop to<\/em> that the OED glosses as \"To lower or degrade oneself morally; to descend to something unworthy\";<\/li>\n<li>the phrase <em>go to any lengths<\/em>, where <em>any lengths<\/em> mean \"the extremes or limits of possible action\";<\/li>\n<li>the phrase <em>stoop to any depths<\/em> (suggested in the comments below);<\/li>\n<li>the idiom <em>stop at nothing<\/em>, meaning \"to do everything in one's power\".<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I haven't been able to find an audio recording of the cited conference call. So given my traditional mistrust of journalistic quotations, we'll have to leave open the question of whether the president actually said this. But the phrase is certainly Out There:<\/p>\n<p>[<a href=\"http:\/\/www.wrestlingforum.com\/smackdown\/2248418-10-3-smackdown-live-discussion-going-straight-hell-2.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">link<\/a>]\u00a0WWE will stoop to no lengths to ride the coattails of dead wrestlers.<br \/>\n[<a href=\"http:\/\/dominicanewsonline.com\/news\/homepage\/news\/politics\/astaphan-says-smear-campaign-going-on-against-dominica\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">link<\/a>]\u00a0When people hate they will stoop to no lengths to destroy who and what is good.<br \/>\n[<a href=\"https:\/\/renewedright.com\/david-hogg-revealed-what-he-wants-to-do-to-laura-ingraham-and-it-isnt-pretty\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">link<\/a>]\u00a0I smell a conspiracy that could involve Hogg and other democrats that will stoop to no lengths to push gun control.<br \/>\n[<a href=\"http:\/\/www.internationalskeptics.com\/forums\/showthread.php?t=258077\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">link<\/a>]\u00a0Spirits will stoop to no lengths to maintain any dignity, it seems.<\/p>\n<p>Update &#8212; There are also plenty of instances of <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/search?q=%22stoop+at+nothing%22.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">stoop at nothing<\/a><\/em>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/search?q=%22stoop+to+any+lengths%22\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>stoop to any lengths<\/em><\/a>, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/search?q=%22stoop+at+anything%22\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">stoop at anything<\/a><\/em>, etc.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Alex Isenstadt, \"Trump warns supporters about 'really angry' Democrats\", Politico 6\/4\/2018: President Donald Trump on Monday afternoon marked 500 days in office by grimly warning supporters that Democrats are motivated to turn out for the midterm elections \u2014 and that they\u2019re \u201creally, really angry.\u201d During a national conference call with grassroots supporters to commemorate the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[82,248],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-idioms","category-usage"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38620"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38627,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38620\/revisions\/38627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}