that sucks

ronbutters at AOL.COM ronbutters at AOL.COM
Sat Mar 29 17:13:05 UTC 2008


I don't recall anyone saying it was "laughable." However, I am surprised to see the report dated "1959" because this is at least 5 years before any other plausible report of "X sucks" that I know about. In that sense it is an important antedating, though of course lexicographers require more than mere memory.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

-----Original Message-----
From: Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>

Date:         Fri, 28 Mar 2008 22:33:56
To:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject:      Re: [ADS-L] that sucks


Your comment is not the kind of thing in which I would find that there
is offense to be taken, Sam.

The fact of the matter is that it was a long time ago and I neglected
to take into consideration what I was doing at the time, so as to get
the date right. In 1960, from January through December, I was at the
Army Language School. Hence, I couldn't have been at Fort Devens. But,
I was at Fort Devens, "the armpit of the world," (the first use of an
expression of this type that I ever heard) the year *before* I was at
the Presidio. Hence, it *had* to have been 1959, not 1960. OTOH, I was
shipped from Fort Leonard Wood to Fort Devens in October of that year.
Arrival at Fort Devens was not an experience easily forgotten. Fort
Devens was also the site of the only "consolidated" mess hall - four
mess halls joined together into the shape of a "+" - that I ever saw
or even heard of, making that mess hall memorable as the site of the
graffito.

IIRC, someone appeared to find it laughable that I would claim to have
read "There is, etc." on the wall of a mess hall sneeringly laughable.
That, OTOH, I do find offensive. Hence, I made it a point *not* to
remember who it was, lest I give in to the temptation to tell him to,
in the words of Eric Cartman, "kiss my black ass."

-Wilson

On 3/28/08, Brenda Lester <alphatwin2002 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Brenda Lester <alphatwin2002 at YAHOO.COM>
> Subject:      Re: that sucks
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Why not ask a newspaper publisher.
>   A radio announcer/dj informed me that the music played between commercials
> is called "bumper" music. He is not a scholar.
>
>   bl
>
>
> Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:
>   ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Laurence Horn
> Subject: Re: that sucks
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 8:02 AM -0700 3/28/08, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
> >On Mar 28, 2008, at 7:38 AM, Larry Horn wrote:
> >
> >>... *Did we ever figure out what those are called, those brief
> >>mentions on the front page of a newspaper section announcing and
> >>promoting a particular article/column on an inside page? It's not
> >>exactly a subhead, but what is it?
> >
> >in a posting on these things on the front pages of porn magazines, i
> >called them "teasers", on analogy with the teasers for tv shows:
> >
> >AZ, 7/18/06: Drawing the line:
> > http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003362.html
> >
> >but "teaser" seems to be used in newspaper contexts for something
> >rather different -- an ad for some coming product or preliminary
> >announcement of some coming event, with few details specified.
> >
> >in the NYT, the brief mentions are called "Inside the Times", with a
> >few on the front page and more on the next page or two; as a set, they
> >function as an incomplete table of contents for the day's news.
>
> Exactly; I've cited data from the "Inside the Times" listings too, as
> well as the bottom-of-the-page items on the Dining section, etc., and
> have never known how to refer to them.
>
> >
> >surely there's a technical term in journalism. i just don't know what
> >it is.
> >
> >arnold
> >
> Ah, good. I may even have asked this before and you may have
> responded as above--annoying, these half-heimers. But "teaser"
> *ought to* be used for these, even if it isn't, so I'll (try to
> remember to) call them that henceforth.
>
> LH
>
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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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