And so it had alwayspleased M. Stutz to expect great things from the dark young man whom he had first seen in his early twenties ; and his expectations had waxed rather than waned on hearing the faint bruit of the love of Ivor and Virginia—for Virginia, M. Stutz thought, would bring fineness to a point in a man like Ivor Marlay, […].
World tour, media whore / "Please the Press in Belgium!" / This was your life
2024 October 2, Philip Haigh, “Different types of passengers require different types of fare”, inRAIL, number1019, page54:
How can an operator be, at the same time, top for overall satisfaction and bottom for value for money? I turned to Anthony Smith for the answer, leaning on his 20 years running Transport Focus and its predecessors. It's commuters, he explained. "You can'tplease commuters, you can only not displease them."
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions atWiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
1983 July 10, Berkeley Breathed,Bloom County, spoken by Yuri Andropov:
(Michael): Yuri Andropov! What are you doing in my closet of anxieties again? (Yuri): Uh, oh. This is not 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., Washington, D.C.? (Michael): Does it look like it? You're in the wrong nightmare again!! (Yuri): ★@#*!?! Soviet maps ... worth nothing! Give,please, directions to White House.
Using the word in this position, padded by commas, is often the trait of a non-native speaker.
The word is most commonly found at the beginning of the clause, at its end, or directly before the verb. Any other positioning, especially when set off by a pause in speech, is often the sign of a non-native speaker.
Hokkien:費神 /费神(zh-min-nan)(hùi-sîn, literally“to expend one's spirit; to spend effort; to be troubled with”),歹勢 /歹势(zh-min-nan)(pháiⁿ-sè / phái-sè / pháiⁿ-sì, literally“(my) bad form; pardon me”),請 /请(zh-min-nan)(chhiáⁿ, literally“to invite; to treat (to a meal, etc.)”),拜託 /拜托(zh-min-nan)(pài-thok, literally“to entrust (one to do something)”)
Mandarin:請 /请(zh)(qǐng)(always in front a verb),拜託 /拜托(zh)(bàituō)
Finnish:no single translation exists in Finnish;olkaa hyvä(fi)(formal; V-form);ole hyvä(fi)(formal; T-form),kiitos(fi)(literally“thank you”)(after the request),ole kiltti(pleading or childish)
Fellow: May I have a few days off to get married? Reply, in the Cincinnati idiom by a boss who had heard the sound but not the sense: Boss:Please?
September 1978, Virginia Watson-Rouslin, “A Foreign View”, inCincinnati,page110:
Even though I heard it was supposed to be German-Catholic background, there’s only one thing German — they say ‘please’ [for the more common ‘pardon me’], which comes frombitte.
September 1979, “Winners: Contest No. 13—The Laugh’s On Us”, inCincinnati, volume12, number12,page15:
[…] He explained in broken English that one of his daughters was ill and he probably could not be there. I did not understand all that he said, so asked, ‘Please?’ per Cincinnati custom. ‘There is no need to plead. I will be there if she is feeling better,’ he replied.
5 May 1998, Jose I. Sarasua, “Come to Cincinnati... Please?”, inCost Engineering[1], volume40, number 5, page 9:
Cincinnati are some of the most polite persons I have ever met in the US. When asking someone a question, instead of saying “Excuse me,” or “Pardon,” they say “Please?”
April 2001, Jeff Robinson, “Say what?”, inOhio Magazine[2], archived fromthe original on2 April 2019, page77:
By the same token, one contestant who doesn’t hear a particular question could say “Pardon me?” while another could say “Please?” Again, neither would be lying if he said he was from Ohio.
In Maine, where as much as a quarter of the population has French ancestry, you may hear a stray hair called acouette, and in parts of Ohioplease is used in the same way as the Germanbitte, to invite a person to repeat something just said — apparently a remnant of the bilingual schooling once available in Cincinnati.
2011, Ellen McIntyre, Nancy Hulan, Vicky Layne,Reading Instruction for Diverse Classrooms: Research-Based, Culturally Responsive Practice, Guilford Press,→ISBN,page72:
Ellen grew up outside of Cincinnati and believed her own talk was the “norm,” while others were speakers of dialects. She was in graduate school before she learned that not all people say,Please? to meanCan you repeat that?
