Heard on The Judges: "vamp down on"

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Tue Oct 28 17:57:14 UTC 2008


Judge Greg to defendants:

"Where do you-all go when y'all go clubbing?

Defendants:

[Give names of pswaydo-nightclubs catering to 18-20-y.o. "young adults"]

Judge:

"How old are you-all?

Defendants:

"31." "32."

Judge:

"I ought to put both of y'all in jail as child-molesters! How y'all
going to be _vamping down on_ these little girls in these children's
clubs?!"


This isn't in Google or in the Urban Dictionary. However, what the UD
does have causes me to think that the cute, little, flirty girl of my
and earlier generations is long gone. My intuition suggests
development through the picture of "a predatory older man _swooping
down like a vampire - perhaps partially reanalyzed as "vamper" - on_
naïve, inexperienced, young women to scoop them up and take sexual
advantage of them." Flirtation has nothing to do with it.

-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.
-----
-Mark Twain

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



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