"Jewfro"

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Thu Apr 24 03:48:03 UTC 2008


At 9:56 PM -0400 4/23/08, Mark Mandel wrote:
>On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 8:50 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>>  At 8:36 PM -0400 4/23/08, Wilson Gray wrote:
>>   >This was used by John Stewart on lat night's Daily Show.
>>
>>   Yup, caught it.  Jon withheld the pictorial evidence, though.
>>
>>
>>   >  If it wasn't
>>   >for Larry, I would never have heard this one, before. Rather, I
>>   >remember "Jaf(f)ro" and "Isro," from back in the day. I assume that
>>   >the "Jaffro" spelling both punned on "Jaffe" and blocked the
>>   >pronunciation, "Jayfro."
>>
>>   I'd find all of these far too opaque, while "Jewfro" (even before I
>>   had grown out my own) was quite motivated.
>
>We've used that, or at least my wife has used it, for many years,
>specifically in describing the hairstyle of one of my cousins in, hmm,
>the 70s?
>
Yes, mine was there from around '67, and I'm pretty sure the label
was already in play before  (but not that much before) then.

LH

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



More information about the Ads-l mailing list