"sucks" revisited

[Wilson Gray]

A good point. I suppose that a half-century is plenty of time for a
slang term to die out. Even in my case, "hummer" has never been part
of my active vocabulary. I've heard it and read  it, but I've never
said it.
-Wilson

On 8/7/06, David Bowie <db.list at pmpkn.net> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       David Bowie <db.list at PMPKN.NET>
> Subject:      Re: "sucks" revisited
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> From:    Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
>
> > My questions are these:
>
> > 1) Why does no one, apparently, find "Hummer," connoting, as it does,
> > a particular method of fellatio, the "Hawaiian hum-job" of the
> > mid-Twentieth Century United States, offensive?
>
> I don't know if it's a current term, at least in all regions. My first
> introduction to the term was someone telling a story about his parents
> getting shocked laughter when his father, talking about the
> radio-controlled model car he'd just gotten, said "Your mother gave me a
> Hummer for Christmas!"
>
> This was right about the same time as i first heard (read: remember
> hearing) Bob Rivers's "Little Hummer Girl", a Christmas parody song
> centered around the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Until i heard the story,
> the song title made no real sense to me--though i got that "hum" was
> being used to mean "perform oral sex on someone", that was figured out
> from context, not knowing the word.
>
> Of course, now that i've learned this term, i find the billboards for
> Orlando's Hummer dealership (one of the highest-selling in the nation,
> presumably because of all the mountains here in Florida) advertising H3s
> as Hummers "Now in a smaller size!" more than amusing.
>
> <snip>
>
> --
> David Bowie                                         http://pmpkn.net/lx
>      Jeanne's Two Laws of Chocolate: If there is no chocolate in the
>      house, there is too little; some must be purchased. If there is
>      chocolate in the house, there is too much; it must be consumed.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


--
Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have
found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be
imposed upon them.

Frederick Douglass

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org