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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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eaglejarl said:
Author's Note: I'm probably out of pocket tomorrow for a Superbowl party, so here is the update early.
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Out of...pocket? While I feel like getting rowdy and acting unusual is normal for the Superbowl, I don't think that's what you mean.

I only bring it up because my supervisor's supervisor made this exact same linguistic error yesterday.
 
Spector29 said:
I only bring it up because my supervisor's supervisor made this exact same linguistic error yesterday.
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Not an error, actually!

"Out of pocket" meaning something like "out of office/position" or "unreachable", has been around for a while, but not heavily used recently.

When "out of pocket" recently came to mean "wild or unhinged", it had the interesting result of two different groups independently using the same phrase as slang, but with different meanings, and often without knowing the other meaning exists, and assuming the other group is confusedly missuseing the phrase.

It's pretty great!

Internet claims the existence of various sources for the "unreachable" usage in the early 1900s, which sounds about right.
I'm pretty sure the more common uses of "what you personally pay" and "making a monetary loss/broke" have been around for longer than that, but it's not relevant and I'm on phone and not going to go hunting for historical examples right now.

I'd guess the "unreachable" usage has fallen off over time, but I'm not sure, and I don't even know how prevelent it was at peak usage, or even when peak usage was.

Does anyone know the origin of the newer "unhinged" definition, btw?

Offhand, "do they read the paper or watch tiktoks?" is probably a decent proxy for if someone is in the "unavailable" or "unhinged" group, complete with the overlap zone in the middle.
 
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We have the best ninja. They're just the best. I know it, you know it, everyone knows it. Little dry Ōnoki, I call him dry Ōnoki, he doesn't have the best ninja. He doesn't! We do. Leaf doesn't have the best ninja in the elemental nations. And there's Yagura, Ya- and not many people know that, by the way, not a real Kage, he's not a real Kage.
 
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