QUERY: This one's gonna be fun...

[Joe Pickett]

We recently quizzed my 11-year -old son on this baseball metaphor, which he used
in describing the behavior of some of his more precocious classmates.

To him, first base meant petting; second base meant "fingering," although he
wasn't quite sure what this meant.

I've forgotten exactly how third and home play out in his diamond (I'll ask him
again).

But apparently Tom Wolfe is correct--there has been a shift on the bases, at
least since I was a teenager in the 1960s, when getting to first base meant
kissing.  Now people are kissing in the batter's box.

Joe





Kathleen Miller <millerk at NYTIMES.COM> on 05/25/2000 04:37:48 PM

Please respond to American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>

To:   ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
cc:    (bcc: Joe Pickett/Trade/hmco)
Subject:  Re: QUERY: This one's gonna be fun...



I guess "what constitutes first base" should have been part of the
question. According to Tom Wolfe, today's first base is what I (and my
mother) would call petting. Smooching and groping and such.

I guess what I am looking for is, what is it called when you go to a party,
get snot-slinging drunk (or not) and start kissing and groping some person
whose name you don't necessarily know.

At my University (the little liberal arts one) and neighbouring U (the big-
still-private-but-not-liberal-arts one) in Texas in the early 90's - we
called it scamming. And it could mean anything from the scenario I just
described to having to do "the walk of shame" and straggling in after
"spending the night."

Katy Miller