bang-utot

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Thu Aug 20 01:30:43 UTC 2009


what's the relation between this condition and that of the equally
popular "koro"?

LH

At 5:56 PM -0400 8/19/09, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>Not in OED though famed in literature.  Tagalog _bangungot_ ('lethal
>nightmare') appears to be the effective etymon, _Naked Lunch_ the linguistic
>vector:
>
>
>1951 J. Z. Santa Cruz in _Journal of the Philippine Medical Association_
>XXVII (July) 476: The Pathology of Bangungot.
>
>1955 (Nov. 1) in William S. Burroughs _The Letters of William S. Burroughs_
>, ed. O Harris  I (N.Y.: Penguin, 1994) 300: In Interzone, dreams can kill -
>Like Bangutot.
>
>1957 J. B. Nolasco in _AMA Archives of Internal Medicine_ XCIX 905: An
>Inquiry into "Bangungot."
>
>1959 William S. Burroughs _Naked Lunch_  (Rpt. N.Y.: Grove Press, 1992) 35:
>Citizens with incipient Bang-utot clutch their penises and call on the
>tourists for help.  Ibid. 66: In Manila about twelve cases of death by
>Bang-utot are recorded each year.
>
>1988 Daniel Rhodes _Adversary_ (N.Y.: Tor) 231: They think it was an attack
>of this rare condition called bang-utot, where a man decides his prick is
>going to retract into his body and kill him. Found mainly among males of
>Malaysian extraction, though this individual was a round-eye.
>
>1990 Jessica Hagedorn _Dogeaters__, qtd. in  _American Literature_  LXXVII
>(2005) 830: The first white man stricken with _bangungot_ [sic]...a
>mysterious illness that claims men.
>
>2009 Wikipedia   [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genital_retraction_syndrome] : A
>condition called 'Bang-utot', which carries symptoms of both bangungot and
>koro, is a repeated theme in William S. Burroughs' book _Naked Lunch_
>
>JL
>
>--
>"There You Go Again...Using Reason on the Planet of the Duck-Billed
>Platypus"
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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



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