Another dating for positive "uptight," if anyone cares

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Mon Mar 10 15:09:36 UTC 2008 

It doesn't appear in __From Grill to Dome_, either, though, of course,
it has much other stuff, both old and new. However, the authors date
nothing nor do they supply any derivations to speak. Hence, much that
appears new to me may actually be old to other people.

E.g., in _Training Day_ Denzel uses first "tap that ass," which is
quite old, but, during the rest of the movie, he uses, "tax that ass,"
which I've never heard outside of the movie and sounds like a
hypercorrection - "tap" as in "tap a keg" is confused with "tap" as in
"tap on the shoulder" (there's a joke whose punchline involves tapping
a woman on the shoulder) and is replaced with "tax," despite the fact
that "tax" adds nothing to the transparency of the phrase - though it
may nevertheless be old, since both "tap ..." and "tax ..." appear in
FGTD.

Very strangely, FGTD claims that "tax" in BE *slang* has the same
meaning as the standard meaning in sE, as in, e.g., "His resources
were sorely taxed," in  the set-up for "tax that ass." Say what?
Unreal, etc. We say, "tore that ass up," "tore that ass down," "wore
that ass out," "whaled a while," "tore some drawers," "P'ed down
heavy," "knocked that ass out," etc., etc. "Taxed that ass('s
resources)"? Surely, one jests!

Is it really possible to get a *precise* meaning for a slang term?

-Wilson

On Sat, Mar 8, 2008 at 11:15 AM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
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>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>  Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
>  Subject:      Re: Another dating for positive "uptight," if anyone cares
>  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>   _The Hiptionary_ has just arrived and I regret to report that the word "up(-)tight" does not appear.
>
>   As to its precise meaning, however, _Mad_ magazine's Jack Davis provides numerous caricatures of a Brooks Bros. clad character, presumably Horne himself or a stand-in, as emcee of the book, which consists mainly of Davis's satirical cartoons of statesmen and celebrities. The emcee, presumably, is triple hip..
>
>   A sample of the text:
>
>   "To blow flicks that cop bread, you need...[s]teamers like Lady Poundcake, Little Miss Lint or one of those Helen Heavy Creams."  (p.8)
>
>   "Shriver's Jivers: The Peace Corps...In the beginning, one chick jiver scratched an uncool blip. Her solo got bad reviews and almost cacked the whole tune. Some High Groovers wanted her hair. "Stiff her!" they cried. But the Sargent says she sticks.." (p. 56)
>
>   "Mr. Bad Face, hip that his cut-buddy pleaded a five, jumps so sour he borks his bowl, and the Ghost Kicker mails in his Eastern Union Boy to cool what won't stay cool." (p. 72)
>
>   JL
>
>  Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU> wrote:
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>  Sender: American Dialect Society
>  Poster: Benjamin Zimmer
>  Subject: Re: Another dating for positive "uptight," if anyone cares
>  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>  On Feb 2, 2008 10:13 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>  >
>  > On 2/2/08, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>  > >
>  > > What do you suppose "up( )tight" meant to Ammons et al. in 1961? In a
>  > > jazz lexicon published in the June 25, 1961 New York Times Sunday
>  > > Magazine ("The Words for the Music", p. 39), Elliot Horne defined "up
>  > > tight" as "the Brooks Brothers manner of dressing." So did the
>  > > approbation originally apply to clothing before being extended to
>  > > other excellent things (as in Stevie Wonder's 1966 usage)?
>  >
>  [snip!]
>  >
>  > That it had something to do with dress is news to me and, frankly, I
>  > don't believe it, since it has no explanation for the relating of the
>  > word to emotional responses nor to its application to mirror-image
>  > emotional responses.
>
>  Unless wearing a tightly tailored suit approximated the physiological
>  circumstances you describe? :->
>
>  > It reads like the "definition" of a man
>  > bullshitting a lame in an effort to maintain his rep as an authority
>  > on black slang, fully aware that there's little possibility that some
>  > (other? I don't think that I've ever heard of this guy. Of course, I'm
>  > strictly an amateur when it comes to slang) black person will read the
>  > article and contradict him.
>
>  Here's what I've gathered... Elliot(t) Horne worked in the music
>  industry, as a press agent for Columbia in the '50s and then for RCA
>  until his death in 1987. Along the way he worked with a lot of jazz
>  and R&B artists and started collecting hipster lingo. The NYT Magazine
>  ran a similar feature from Horne on Aug. 18, 1957 ("For Cool Cats and
>  Far-Out Chicks; Here is a lexicon for do-it-yourself hipsters of the
>  newest in jazz slang. Don't be an oofus, man. Just dig it!"), where
>  his bio line reads, "Elliot Horne is a cat who has been making the
>  jazz scene since the mid-Thirties when he fell into the Benny Goodman
>  cult." He would go on to publish _The Hiptionary: A Hipster's View of
>  the World Scene_ in 1963.
>
>  Whether this makes him a reliable source on varieties of uptightness,
>  I cannot say. From a quick look I don't see anything particularly
>  amiss in his two NYT pieces. In fact, he seems to catch some good
>  nuances. For "lame" he's got:
>
>  "Lame--Square, but not beyond redemption. If you're lame, man, you can learn."
>
>  And here's one we previously discussed:
>
>  "Good lookin' out (Pause one beat between "good" and "lookin'")--If a
>  cat tips you to both ends of a daily double or sets up a blind date
>  that dazzles you, that's good lookin' out."
>
>  So if he was a lame, he was a relatively knowledgeable one. But I'll
>  leave it to the real slangologists around here to pass judgment.
>
>
>  --Ben Zimmer
>
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