"Jock"

[Dennis R. Preston]

>This was a big error in recent school-shooting episodes. Old guys
>like us were misunderstabnding the current use of "jock" (usually
>pretty academically oriented, well-groomed, soft drug and alcohol
>using, mainstream kids, only some of whom are involved in sports).
>The use from my time was sports-involvement exclusivly, although I
>believe the connection with the semantic change is pretty
>straightforward.


dInIs



>yOn Sun, 7 Jan 2001, Dennis R. Preston wrote:
>
>>  Certainly not. Us Louisville-area jocks were jocks in the 40's. This
>>  is the "athlete" sense of jock, not the later preppie (or non "hood"
>>  sense) sense.
>
>I'm not sure what you mean.  The "athlete" sense of jock is the one I was
>referring to -- what is the "later preppie" sense?
>
>Fred Shapiro
>
>
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>Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
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--
Dennis R. Preston
Department of Linguistics and Languages
Michigan State University
East Lansing MI 48824-1027 USA
preston at pilot.msu.edu
Office: (517)353-0740
Fax: (517)432-2736