If U Seek Amy

Benjamin Zimmer bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU
Fri Jan 23 06:54:34 UTC 2009


On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 12:45 AM, Baker, John <JMB at stradley.com> wrote:
>
> To clarify, Google Books does have one apparently pre-Joyce use, from
> the 1912 Decennial Record of the Princeton class of 1901:  "If you see
> Kay Swain, tell him to mail me at once the fifty cents I won from him
> in the Yale game at Princeton, when we bet on who led the Princeton
> batting ...
>
> My assumption is that this is not a pun on "fuck," but it's hard to be
> sure, and this is all that Google Books gives me.

What to make of the song "If You See K" by R[eginald] Spofforth,
listed in the _Catalogue of the Allen A. Brown Collection of Music in
the Public Library of the City of Boston_ (1916)?

http://books.google.com/books?id=MEAQAAAAYAAJ&q=if-you-see-k


--Ben Zimmer

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



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