meaning of "lady do or die"?

[Torsten]

Hi,

It seems Billy Idol has created the phrase 'lady or do or die'. What does it sound like to you? I mean, would it make any sense to you if you heard it out of any context? In other words, it is a phrase that was coined by Billy Idol?

Thanks,
Torsten
PS: When you google the phrase "it makes a woman bleed", the lyrics of "Lady Do or Die" come up as the top results.
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[Yankee]

Hi Torsten

I don't consider "lady do or die" to be a fixed expression in general use. To me, the expression has not been adopted for general use -- and to me "more general usage outside the original context" would be the prerequisite for claiming that an expression had been "coined". Instead, the usage basically seems to be completely restricted to the lyrics of a song or references to the lyrics of that song.

When I do an advanced Google search, i.e. I search for only English results and exclude the words "-Billy -Idol -lyrics -music -track -film" from my search, I get only 7 Google results for "Lady Do or Die".

The "do or die" part of "Lady do or die" is a common collocation, however.

My theories:
Without any context whatsoever, I might expect either a comma after the word Lady (i.e. someone is addressing a woman), or I might assume that someone was using the expression "do or die" as a sort of name for someone (in which case hyphens would not be unusual: "Lady Do-or-Die"). It also strikes me as a possible play on the name "Lady Di".

That said, I think I'll now go do a search for the lyrics to see whether I think any of my theories actually seem to be the case.
.