Too-too

[Lynne Murphy]

Larry Horn's written some on word-reduplication (it wasn't a kiss-kiss),
and I'm sure he'll have something to say about this, but for what it's
worth:

It's my experience that this comes from "gayspeak".  I found an
interesting example on the web about Oscar Wilde's travels in San
Francisco by looking for "just too too" (note that the second 'too' should
really be italicized for proper effect).  This anecdote doesn't make it
clear whether 'just too too' is a Wildeism or a general British (or
Irish?) thing that seemed 'Wildean' to the Californians because they just
didn't know much about stylish Britspeak.

From:  http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist5/wilde1.html

During the winter
months there were published
in the Wasp and in other
California publications
occasional jingles about
Wilde and the Aesthetes; a
popular song entitled ³Oscar
Dear² was received with
condescending humor in the
city¹s gay spots; and the
slang of the moment included
such supposedly Wildean
expressions as ³too utterly
utter,² ³just too too,² and
³do you yearn?²

Doing a UK-only search on Yahoo, I found no instances of 'just too too'.


Lynne

M Lynne Murphy
Lecturer in Linguistics
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

phone +44-(0)1273-678844
fax   +44-(0)1273-671320