That has made me very happy, restored my confidence, and otherwise gratified me. This twentieth-century expression relies on the meaning of make as “succeed.” However, in the mouth of a tough police detective named Dirty Harry, a film role played by Clint Eastwood, the phrase was turned into “Go ahead—make my day,” meaning “Give me a chance to get back at you.” In the presidential campaign of 1988 George H. W. Bush used the phrase quite frequently, as President Ronald Reagan had before him, and it was not always clear which meaning was intended. However, the more common usage was that employed by P. G. Wodehouse in his novel, The Luck of Bodkins (1935), “That will be great. That will just make my day.”