baseball cursing, 1898 (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Mullins, Bill AMRDEC]

Classification:  UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

"Cunnilinctal".

That's a word I'll remember, even though I doubt I'll ever have occasion
to use it.
Ever.



> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society
> [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Jonathan Lighter
> Sent: Wednesday, December 05, 2007 8:30 AM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: baseball cursing, 1898
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
> Subject:      Re: baseball cursing, 1898
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> -----------------
>
> "Dog" used as a strong insult leads me to prefer an earlier
> date, ca1898, than a later one.as So does the absence of both
> the f-word as an intensive adj. or adv. and of the mf-word in
> any form.
>
>   The prominence of the cunnilinctal participle - very rare
> even in WWII accounts - also suggests that the text is
> relatively early.
>
>   JL
>
>
>
> "Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET> wrote:
>   ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: "Douglas G. Wilson"
> Subject: Re: baseball cursing, 1898
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> -----------------
>
> > Of course, a joke or hoax from the period is just as useful, for
> >present purposes, as an authentic document. How certain is
> the dating?
> >The document itself does not seem to include a date, though
> it refers
> >to a November 1897 meeting. It's easy to imagine, for
> example, that it
> >could have been produced in 1927, with "See how bad things were 30
> >years ago?" being part of the joke.
> >
> >John Baker
>
> ....
>
> >The language is almost certainly authentic for the period, but I
> >strongly suspect that the document itself was intended as a joke
> >(rather than a "hoax"). No names of "committee members" are
> given and
> >the document may well be a sub rosa publication.
> >
> > The unexpected (and for most people unprecedented)
> appearance of such
> >lurid insults in cold print would, I feel sure, have been
> regarded as
> >uproariously funny by many young men of the era -
> ballplayers included.
> >
> > JL
>
> This is how it seems to me too: a joke, probably by some
> baseball fans with surreptitious access to a printing press,
> of indeterminate
> date: could be 1898, could be much later as John Baker says.
>
> The lack of specificity in the ostensible authorship ("the
> Committee") is suspicious, as JL implies. The lack of any
> specification of the intended addressee(s) is also suspicious.
>
> Furthermore, it seems to me that such a document could have
> (and if genuine probably would have) conveyed the same
> message without any ambiguity using fewer and shorter
> examples and using expurgated forms such as "f--k", "c--t",
> "c--k", etc. for the most unacceptable words, at the very least.
>
> I agree that the item as it is would have been very appealing
> to many young men within my own recollection, probably more
> so in earlier decades ... in fact, I believe there might
> could be the occasional person even now who would find it a
> little bit amusing.
>
> -- Doug Wilson
>
>
> --
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Classification:  UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

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