Pssst, for context on The Three "reallys" Construction see my comment on LL and repeated below:
The Three "reallys" Construction is strictly a spoken construction, as far as I can tell, so I can't do much of a search, but it's common in sitcoms and very commonly used in casual setting amongst friends when a person is faced with a situation that is (1) surprising, (2) intractable. The three "reallys" provide a cascaded enunciation of the cline from genuine surprise to complete defeatism (i.e., the person realizes there's nothing they can do about the situation).
really 1 = interjection like wow expressing internal surprise.
really 2 = interrogative, actually questioning the other person wrt the situation.
really 3 = expression of defeat (i.e., I give up).
2 comments:
I must be watching the wrong sitcoms, because I don't think I've seen this.
Can you give (e.g. youtube) links to a couple of instances?
(I'm not skeptical, just curious.)
The most perfectest example I've ever heard is from an episode of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia said by Dee, but I can't find it on YouTube. It's a hard thing to track down. I might have to buy the DVDs to find it (okay, I'd be buying the DVDs to watch them, but sooner or later I'd stumble onto the phrase).
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