summary grasshopper mind short answer grasshopper mind british english japanese english summary answer thanks linguist readers responded query 5 1431 94 12 11 grasshopper mind expression entered kenkyusha japanese english english japanese dictionaries 1974 1980 roget thesaurus 1982 apparently found monolingual english dictionaries respondents alphabetical order deborah milam berkley marie egan ted harding steven schaufele steve seegmiller todd sieling stephen p spackman inquiry asked four questions english language reference works enter grasshopper mind varietal dialectal term first recorded analogous grasshoppery words languages 1 looking grasshopper mind english dictionaries lexicographical dead end checked dozens including old new standard slang uk us one enters larger dictionaries record derogatory sense _ grasshopper _ e g new shorter oxford english dictionary 1993 2 _ fig _ person held resemble grasshopper character behaviour inconstant flighty frivolous person l16 nearsynonym grasshopper brain webster third new international dictionary 1971 usage example _ grasshopper _ meaning 3 2 light frivolous untouched care future 2 harding definitively answers second question grasshopper mind wellknown standard uk english usage say someone grasshopper mind means focus attention jumps unpredictably subject random subject none respondents including three widelydispersed speakers american english berkley egan seegmiller seen heard collocation agreed could readily understand means terms _ grasshopper _ meaning frivolous careless semantics grasshopper mind fairly selfexplanatory 3 dating grasshopper mind coinage moot harding says sure particularly recent origin pretty sure must possible trace early uses phrase grasshopper mind sieling suggests checking aesop ant grasshopper funk wagnalls new standard dictionary 1913 defines _ grasshoppering _ 1 unsettled unsteady course life improvident living fable grasshopper ant 4 grasshopper mind crosslinguistic analogues schaufele describes like complex words german cant find dictionary crafted nonce completely productive strategies perfectly understandable reasonablyintelligent speaker language coin one day lehrgangsprotokoll mean mean chool transcript spackman thinks grasshopper mind reads like loan translation foreign expression mentions interesting ojibwa calque phrase fire stick given novels movies ignorant american natives apparently literal morphemeby morpheme translation ojibwa word gun except one thing stupid fire translates launch projectile stick classifier rigid rod rigid projectile launcher snappy rather tighter word gun nt think semantically transparent grasshopper mind reveals lexicographical gap english dictionaries published united states united kingdom unknown american anglophones familiar many uk anglophones lexicographers overlooked metaphor orthopterous mentality modern lexicography benefiting computerized corpora machinereadable dictionaries instance searching adjectival _ grasshopper _ noun combinations cobuilddirect online corpus direct cobuild collins co uk reveals three occurrences grasshopper mind two grasshopper warbler one grasshopper leap weather nijinsky many dictionaries enter _ grasshopper warbler _ locustella naevia characterized buzzing call none _ grasshopper mind _ research necessary information expression historical origins distributional usages seegmiller asks australian english would gratefully welcomed michael carr otaru university commerce otaru 047 japan email carr canal otaruuc ac jp fax 81 0 13422 0467