Finally!
ronbutters at AOL.COM
ronbutters at AOL.COM
Tue Sep 25 14:14:54 UTC 2007
I'm white and about the same age as Wilson, or maybe older, and I grew up in a relatively small town in Iowa. My memory is that "fuck over" has been a part of my vocabulary since the early 1950s. At least, I do not have the same memory of a "that's weird" first sighting that I do for, say, "take a whiz." I'm not disputing the possibility that "fuck over" may have originated in the AAVE corner of vernacular culture, only that one individual's grammatical judgments and memories do not tell us a lot. Jon's citing of the historical record is certainly provocative, but the record as he reports it (as with so many slang terms) is spotty and inconclusive. As we know, slang is sometimes invented in different communities at different times. I'm not saying that "fuck over" started in 1952 among white adolescents in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, just that my memory is that we were using it then--though with a syntax somewhat less restrictive than Wilson's. It would certainly be unusual, would it!
not, for verb+particle constructions NOT top allow "fuck + pronoun + over". I don't think one can make a good case for saying that "over" is a preposition (e.g., one can't say, "Over the nation the president has fucked" with the same meaning as "The president has fucked over the nation"). I'm sure there are other grammatical possiblities that I'm not thinking of right now in the airport waiting to board the plane;? maybe somebody can hjelp me here?
What Jon said.
As for my claim that there's a relationship to race, "fuck over" has
been a BE street (and, in some households, a home) colloquialism that
I've been familiar with since the beginning of time. But this, in my
experience, is not the case among white speakers. As an example the
racial bit, in 1960, I once used the term in the barracks at the Army
Language School. I asked, "Have you guys heard about the way that the
First shirt fucked over Lupow?" And my barracks-mates, all of whom
were white (during the time that I was at the Language School, among
approximately 400 students in the Russian Division, there were only
two black GI"s: your humble correspondent and a WAC with a big butt),
freaked. Not a single one had ever heard the phrase, "fuck over,"
before. I was stunned, since I know it like I know my own name.
Naturally, they thought that it was really cool and wanted to learn
it. (I had to teach some people that you say "FUCK over" and not "fuck
OVER"). I first heard the expression, "fuck someone over" ca.1970 and,
from that time to the present, I've never heard it used by blacks
under any circumstances, despite any literary evidence to the
contrary, possibly because I've never been a fan of Louis Armstrong,
etc., not to mention that no such record would ever have been played
on the radio and it's doubtful that it would have been sold in any
black record shop, back in the day, any more than a black store or
shop would have sold pornography. Till at least the 'Seventies, the
most erotic material freely available in black-operated stores was
Playboy, Jet magazine, and the Jet girlie calendar. I went to grade
school with Lamont McLemore, Jet's longtime girlie photographer -
since ca.1950 - and also a member of the Fifth Dimension, the formerly
well-known Saint Louis singing group. He was a Renaissance man, I
reckon. It must have been a hard life, since Lamont, though he was
younger than I am, died several years ago.
-Wilson
As for the syntax, saying "He fucked over me," etc., sounds completely
natural to me. OTOH, "He fucked me over"
-----Original Message-----
From: Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Sent: Tue, 25 Sep 2007 8:44 am
Subject: Re: [ADS-L] Finally!
What Jon said.
As for my claim that there's a relationship to race, "fuck over" has
been a BE street (and, in some households, a home) colloquialism that
I've been familiar with since the beginning of time. But this, in my
experience, is not the case among white speakers. As an example the
racial bit, in 1960, I once used the term in the barracks at the Army
Language School. I asked, "Have you guys heard about the way that the
First shirt fucked over Lupow?" And my barracks-mates, all of whom
were white (during the time that I was at the Language School, among
approximately 400 students in the Russian Division, there were only
two black GI"s: your humble correspondent and a WAC with a big butt),
freaked. Not a single one had ever heard the phrase, "fuck over,"
before. I was stunned, since I know it like I know my own name.
Naturally, they thought that it was really cool and wanted to learn
it. (I had to teach some people that you say "FUCK over" and not "fuck
OVER"). I first heard the expression, "fuck someone over" ca.1970 and,
from that time to the present, I've never heard it used by blacks
under any circumstances, despite any literary evidence to the
contrary, possibly because I've never been a fan of Louis Armstrong,
etc., not to mention that no such record would ever have been played
on the radio and it's doubtful that it would have been sold in any
black record shop, back in the day, any more than a black store or
shop would have sold pornography. Till at least the 'Seventies, the
most erotic material freely available in black-operated stores was
Playboy, Jet magazine, and the Jet girlie calendar. I went to grade
school with Lamont McLemore, Jet's longtime girlie photographer -
since ca.1950 - and also a member of the Fifth Dimension, the formerly
well-known Saint Louis singing group. He was a Renaissance man, I
reckon. It must have been a hard life, since Lamont, though he was
younger than I am, died several years ago.
-Wilson
As for the syntax, saying "He fucked over me," etc., sounds completely
natural to me. OTOH, "He fucked me over"
On 9/24/07, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
> Subject: Re: Finally!
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Though skin pigmentation is irrelevant per se, HDAS suggests (and I believe)
that "to fuck over X"
>
> a. was indeed the original form in the sense in question,
>
> b. has been vastly more prevalent among speakers of AAVE - so much so as to
sugget the idiom's origin there,
>
> c. was not much used in white speech before the mid '70s,
>
> d. still sounds rhythmically or positionally "wrong" to me as a speaker of
WAVE.
>
> Earliest HDAS ex. is from 1961, but the context suggests it was around for a
while.
>
> The form "fuck X over" undoubtedly owes something to "work X over." I
believe this is becoming the general form.
>
> JL
>
>
> Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Wilson Gray
> Subject: Finally!
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> The correct usage has appeared in print! From Slashdot:
>
> "... [G]ranting corporations the right to _fuck over_ other
> corporations who come up with rather ordinary improvements ..."
>
> Lest the point be missed, for those of us old enough (and/or black enough?),
>
> "... [G]ranting corporations the right to _fuck_ other corporations
> _over_ who come up with rather ordinary improvements ..." is
> ungrammatical.
>
> That is, [fuck NP over] is absolutely *not* a viable or a grammatical
>
> alternative to [fuck over NP]. Unless, of course, you speak a
> different dialect.
>
> There are 215,000 raw Google hits that include uses such as "get the
> fuck over it." So, sorting out the various usages would take ten men
> and a boy. But the Urban Dictionary, at least, has it right. Well,
> sort of. The second definition defines _fuck over_ as a Briticism
> meaning "fuck over," with examples ambiguous as to dialect. And either
> UD doesn't have "fuck NP over" (unlikely?) or I don't know how to find
> it (likely?).
>
> -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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--
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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