"Give me some sugar" ... alive and well

[Joseph Salmons]

Some sugar = 'a kiss.'


On Dec 18, 2007, at 6:01 PM, Cohen, Gerald Leonard wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Cohen, Gerald Leonard" <gcohen at UMR.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "Give me some sugar" ... alive and well
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> But what exactly does it mean?
>
> Gerald Cohen
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: American Dialect Society on behalf of Joseph Salmons
> Sent: Tue 12/18/2007 5:06 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: "Give me some sugar" ... alive and well
>
>
>
> Oh, this one is far from dead ... at least among my relatives in North
> Carolina.
>
> Joe
>
>
> On Dec 18, 2007, at 4:55 PM, Dennis Preston wrote:
>
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>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Dennis Preston <preston at MSU.EDU>
>> Subject:      Re: "Give me some sugar."
>> =
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> ------
>>
>> 'Give me some sugar' was very common among white folk in Southern
>> Illinois, Southern Indiana, Northern Kentucky, including use by my
>> grandparents, making it  much older, in the early 40s and 50s. It is
>> it old timey indeed; could be gone.
>>
>> dInIs
>>
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>>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
>>> Subject:      "Give me some sugar."
>>> =
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> ------
>>>
>>> When I was at UC Davis in 1969, I had occasion to say to my
>>> girlfriend, a white native of Sacramento, "Gimme some sugar'." After
>>> an awkward silence lasting some few seconds, she finally replied, "I
>>> don't know what you mean." From that time to the present, I've
>>> asked a
>>> random assortment of white Northerners about this expression and
>>> have
>>> yet to find one who was familiar with it. (I haven't asked any white
>>> Southerners, since they're as rare as black people in the rarefied
>>> Northern atmosphere in which I live. In addition, I've, for no good
>>> reason, assumed that the expression is General Southern and is not
>>> peculiar to BE.)
>>>
>>> Google yields about 80,000 raw hits for all variants: "sugar" v.
>>> "suga," "give me" v. "gimme," etc.
>>>
>>> DARE has only(?) "gimme some juice," under GIVE, presumably only in
>>> its literal meaning. Interestingly enough, all of DARE's Black
>>> variants are in use nearly everywhere in BE as I know it.
>>>
>>> So, I guess that this is still almost surely only a Down-Home
>>> expression.
>>>
>>> -Wilson
>>>
>>> -Wilson
>>>
>>> --
>>> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint
>>> to
>>> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
>>> -----
>>>                                             -Sam'l Clemens
>>>
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>>
>> --
>> Dennis R. Preston
>> University Distinguished Professor
>> Department of English
>> Morrill Hall 15-C
>> Michigan State University
>> East Lansing, MI 48864 USA
>>
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