the meaning of ''developed from''

[Jonathan Lighter]

All I intended was to observe that the putative sequence "go frig yourself" > "go fuck yourself" > "go chase yourself" / "go fuck x" is a logical and perhaps plausible chain of development.

Naturally, logic may have had nothing to do with the actual development, though it may have some bearing on the sequence of lexicalization.  Other possibilities are not excluded.

The existence or nonexistence of "go frig " is irrelevant here.  As for the masturbatory sense of "frig," I recommend a look at HDAS.

BTW and somewhat off-topic, Francis Grose defined "frigging" in the late 18th C. simply as "trifling."  Whether he meant this as an adj. equivalent in meaning to (then-unrecorded) "fucking" or as a participal as in "Stop frigging with that !" is unclear.  The latter interpretation is more parsimonious.

Further early exx. would be welcome.

JL

RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:
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The meaning of "developed from" is not clear here. How many people knew that
FRIG meant masturbate? How many people would use the redundant reflexive "Go
frig yourself!" when "Go frig!" would do?

If what wuxxmupp means is that, historically, somewhere somebody said "Go
frig yourself!" before anyone ever in the history of the planet said "Go fuck
yourself!" then his is doubtless an unconfirmable hyposthesis. If what he means
is that, historically, nobody could have thought to say "Go fuck yourself!"
unless he or she had first heard, "Go frig yourself!" then I disagree.

Or maybe he meant something else that I am missing here?


In a message dated 4/25/05 8:30:34 AM, wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM writes:


> My feeling has always been that "GFY" underlies "GCY," but there is an
> understandable lack of early written records.
>
> Indeed, I've always felt that "Go fuck yourself" may have developed from "Go
> frig yourself," since that, in the older sense of "frig," is at least is
> physiologically possible.
>
>
>

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