? ? ? keep a cow

[Jonathan Lighter]

A fellow graduate student assured me about twenty years ago that an interjectional "Fuck a snake !" was current in her northern W. Va. home town as cry of annoyance or the like.

Has anybody else heard this ?  I hate expressions supported by just one citation. Hate 'em !

JL

"Dennis R. Preston" <preston at MSU.EDU> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Dennis R. Preston"

Subject: Re: ? ? ? keep a cow
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It was "Go fuck a dog" or "Fuck a dog" (or, more elaborately, "(Go)
fuck a big brown dog") in S. Indiana-Louisville in the late 40s early
50s.

dInIs


>Is "Go fuck a cow !" known to exist ?
>
>JL
>
>James C Stalker wrote:
>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>-----------------------
>Sender: American Dialect Society
>Poster: James C Stalker
>Subject: Re: ? ? ? keep a cow
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Further thought. Perhaps the base form is "go fuck yourself." By
>extension, "go fuck a cow," which I'm sure your dad would never have said or
>even have thought of, so the "go + (do) + absurd action" is a euphemistic
>substitute. Opens up lots of creative options. Maybe?
>
>Jim
>
>Roger Shuy writes:
>
>> on 4/23/05 9:58 AM, RonButters at AOL.COM at RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:
>>
>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>> -----------------------
>>> Sender: American Dialect Society
>>> Poster: RonButters at AOL.COM
>>> Subject: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Re:=20=A0=20=A0=20=A0=20keep=20a=20cow?=
>>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> --> -
>>>
>>> In a message dated 4/23/05 9:51:30 AM, rshuy at MONTANA.COM writes:
>>>
>>>
>>>> My late father, who would be 101 now if he were still alive, used some
>>>> expressions that I've not heard from others. I wonder if any one else has
>>>> heard the expression of disgust said to someone else, "Oh, go keep a cow."
>>>> He lived all his life in central to northern Ohio.
>>>>
>>>> Roger
>>>>
>>>
>>> This seems to me to mean the same thing as "Oh, go fly a kite," which was
>>> very common in east-central Iowa in the 1950s. "Oh, go keep a cow" sounds
>>> vaguely
>>> familiar, but I can't say for sure that any of my grandparents used it (or
>>> didn't).
>>>
>> He also used to say, "Go chase yourself" and I wonder if he was alone in
>> this too.
>>
>> roger
>>
>
>
>
>James C. Stalker
>Department of English
>Michigan State University
>
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--
Dennis R. Preston
University Distinguished Professor
Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic,
Asian and African Languages
Wells Hall A-740
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1027 USA
Office: (517) 353-0740
Fax: (517) 432-2736

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