This has been bothering me for a while… in Meredith Wilson's The Music Man, there's a song entitled "Shipoopi" about the dream girl who is neither a hussy nor so prudish she can't be woo'd. One of the good qualities espoused is that "She will never get sore on the way to supper". From context, it doesn't appear any injury is taking place to be literally sore, so what colloquial meaning would this have had in 1957 when this play was first performed on Broadway? I found a couple likely candidates in the dictionary but I couldn't find dates when they became widespread.
Learn English – Meaning of “she will never get sore” in 1950s
meaning-in-context
Related Solutions
Though one answer analyses this as an example of the single-word verb 'will', and this probably explains the development of the construction, Wikipedia considers 'will on' a transitive multi-word verb (it uses the term 'phrasal verb').
Wiktionary has a definition for the term:
will on Verb
[Categories: English lemmas ... English verbs ... English phrasal verbs ... English phrasal verbs with particle (on)]
to will on
To wish intensely that someone succeeds in what they are doing. Often implies a silent, or almost inaudible wish.
[reformatted]
There is often debate over whether some of these expressions should be considered as unitary [multi-word verbs] or not.
The imperative Get this generally introduces a statement that is expected to be surprising or impressive in some way. In this particular context, it means approximately pay attention, because what I am about to tell you is amazing in a good way!
It's an informal phrase; I would most expect to see it in dialogue or actual speech, either in a situation where the speaker is laying out truly surprising or unexpected facts or as mild hyperbole. In fiction, it seems to pop up particularly in mysteries or from the mouths of young people. I believe the latter is the context in the example.
Possible substitute phrases might be check this out or can you believe it?
Some other examples1 of usage (bolding added):
‘But get this,’ continued his companion, their voices fading as they moved deeper into the building, ‘she says her mother hates Americans because one of them near raped her in the war.’
Get this. Where had Rebus heard that expression before? He fumbled in his jacket pocket and found a folded piece of paper. Unfolded it and began to read.
‘GET THIS, I'M NOT HOMOSEXUL, O.K.?’ It was the photocopy of the Wolfman's letter to Lisa.
Get this. It did have a transatlantic ring to it, didn't it? A curious way altogether of starting a letter. Get this. Be warned, watch out. There were several ways of starting a letter so that the reader knew he was to pay particular attention to it. But get this?
(Ian Rankin, Tooth and Nail, 2009. Full quote available in The Complete Rebus Collection.) Note that the novel is set in the UK, so transatlantic here means (North) American; this also suggests that the phrase isn't common in British English.
"All four of them have been guests of various government facilities, mostly violent crimes. Assaults, assaults with deadlies. Spine-crackers and persuaders, from the sheets. But get this."
She lowered her voice even more, so that McNab had to lean in, catch a teasing whiff of her shampoo. "They're connected to Max Ricker."
(J.D. Robb/Nora Roberts, Judgment in Death, 2000.)
"So Sam just called me. Like, he just woke up. In Todd's loft. On the couch. But get this, he woke up totally nude, with his leather jacket tied around his ankles."
(Nina-Marie Gardner, I'm Not This Girl, 2012)
Mr. BYRD. . . . Let me read a section of the Constitution to Senators. Section 7 of article 1, Paragraph 1:
All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but—
Get this—
...
but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.
Now, we all know that when fast track is brought to the Senate, Senators may not propose amendments. In my way of reading the Constitution, that is not in accordance with what the Constitution says.
(Congressional Record, V. 147, PT. 18, December 11, 2001 to December 12, 2001) It doesn't get much more formal than a Congressional hearing, so apparently this phrase does get used in formal speech. But I still wouldn't recommend it for formal writing.
1 Most of these examples are in the form "but get this" because that construction is easier to search for; I suspect the plain form "get this" is also very common, but it gets swallowed up in searches by phrases like "get this soon because it won't last" and "let's get this party started" and "get this thing off of me!"
Best Answer
As Bill Franke and Jon Hanna tell you, sore means “angry” here, in the sense of “upset” or “vexed” rather than “enraged”. But when The Music Man came out this use was already on the wane (note that the play is set in 1912). It was regarded in the 50s as slang of our parents’ generation, and now is rarely used in any but the physical sense of “ache-y”; in the sense at hand it was replaced by “pissed” or, for a while, “bent out of shape”.
It was not always slang in this sense. The earliest instance of “sore at” in COHA occurs in Henry Adams’ novel Democracy, where a character of the social elite uses the phrase in a serious conversation about politics:
And sore has never (until now) been reserved for bodily pain: “sore at heart”, “sore disappointment”, “sore repentance” have been clichés for hundreds of years. Cynewulf’s Crist applies it to sorȝceare, “grieving anxiety” about the year 900.