obscene words from "Deadwood"

Grant Barrett gbarrett at AMERICANDIALECT.ORG
Mon Mar 8 20:29:46 UTC 2004


Are there any scripts we can look at?

On Mar 8, 2004, at 14:50, Geoffrey Nunberg wrote:
> I note that both the OED and HDAS give a Farmer and Henley entry in
> 1891 for the earliest use of "cocksucker," and that the OED's first
> cite of "piss off" is from 1968 and for "shitface" is from 1937. In
> the light of those cites (but bearing in mind how long such terms can
> live in speech without being recorded), does the use of the words in
> "Deadwood" seem authentic?


--
Grant Barrett

Assistant Editor, Lexical Reference
Project Editor, Historical Dictionary of American Slang
Oxford University Press

American Dialect Society webmaster
http://www.americandialect.org/



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