# Pluperfect vs. Blue Burning?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluperfect-vs-blue-burning/721982>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [June 8, 2015, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluperfect-vs-blue-burning/721982 "2015-06-08T16:21:15Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Zeldar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/b77776/32.png) [@Zeldar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeldar)\
**Post date:** [June 8, 2015, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluperfect-vs-blue-burning/721982/1 "2015-06-08T16:21:15Z")

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Somewhere in a YouTube clip (not [this one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuEHc3lXYZw)) and surely in [this one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0ChuY2OklI) \<try 2:20 and following \> character Ty Ty (Robert Ryan) has a line something like, **Why in the pluperfect hell did that dirt have to bust loose like that…?**

As an impressionable youngster I thought I was hearing **“blue burning hell”** and it made no sense to me.

Anybody else have such a dilemma? 😃

I almost started this in _Cafe Society_ but it’s the expression I’m mostly curious about.

Damn fun movie – if dated. So move the thread if you see fit. (Like you need me to say that!) 🙂

BTW: This may have been my first awareness of Michael Landon (as an albino, no less).

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**Author:** ![Zeldar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/b77776/32.png) [@Zeldar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeldar)\
**Post date:** [June 8, 2015, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluperfect-vs-blue-burning/721982/2 "2015-06-08T16:39:25Z")

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I thought this topic may have been around before! Sure enough, [Guess Who!](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=15936175&postcount=44)

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**Author:** ![Max\_Torque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)\
**Post date:** [June 8, 2015, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluperfect-vs-blue-burning/721982/3 "2015-06-08T20:45:14Z")

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[“What in the pluperfect past tense was that?”](https://youtu.be/xjVVZMzYDAo?t=1m55s)

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**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\
**Post date:** [June 8, 2015, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluperfect-vs-blue-burning/721982/4 "2015-06-08T21:14:11Z")

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This guy was on his first trip to Boston, where he’d heard that ‘broiled scrod’ was a local delicacy not to be missed. So he gets off the plane, jumps in a cab, and asks the cabbie, “Hey, you know where I can get scrod around here?”

The cabbie being a Harvard grad, he turned to the guy and said, “You know, I’ve been driving a hack for fifteen years here, and I’ve heard that question a thousand times, but that’s the first time anyone’s used the pluperfect subjunctive.”