[off-list] Re: [ADS-L] "fanny", n.4

Sun Dec 16 03:07:26 UTC 2012

To repeat:

>If the name "Fanny" had been applied more or less arbitrarily as a childish
euphemism, its chance identity with the name of the fictional courtesan
would undoubtedly have helped its career.

S & L's major point, however, that people just love their naive faith that
the word comes from Fanny Hill, or is responsible for Fanny Hill, is
indisputable and, yes, they will undoubtedly keep on repeating it.

Because it's colorful. And literary.

JL

On Sat, Dec 15, 2012 at 8:17 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

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> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: [off-list] Re: [ADS-L] "fanny", n.4
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Dec 15, 2012, at 5:20 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>
> > "Perh. cf." is clearly *not* intended to imply that Cleland named his
> > heroine for her fanny.
> >
> > The naming, however, just may have gone in the opposite direction
>
> Spedding and Lambert argue against that assumption too, based on the
> absence of evidence (which to be sure is not evidence of absence, but
> suspicious if not dispositive) of such a meaning between 1749 and the
> 1830s; they maintain there's no causal connection either way.  Their
> paper concludes as follows (note the nod to the "gay" question we discuss
> every now and then, although they don't bring up _Bringing Up Baby_):
>
> With no evidence for the obscene use of the word _fanny_ before the late
> 1830s, there is clearly no justification—at present—for positivist claims
> concerning the obscene intentions of authors who used the name Fanny,
> such as Cleland and Fielding, and no point to speculation concerning
> the obscene meaning of Fanny in the texts penned by these authors.
> Although it is always possible that evidence will emerge in future for
> the slang use of fanny before 1837—and Lambert’s 119-year predating
> of _snatch_ is a warning against contrary positivist claims—there is
> certainly
> no support for the sexual construction placed on texts or passages
> in which the name Fanny appears. It is also apparent that the
> sometimes-elaborate interpretations based on such texts are misguided.
> One might as justifiably reinterpret all pre-twentieth-century texts
> according
> to the modern significations of _gay_, _queer_, and so on.
> It is beyond the scope of this article to explain why so many
> lexicographers
> and critics have been willing to invent, to repeat, or to accept
> arguments that attempt to establish that fanny had an obscene meaning
> in the eighteenth century; or to explain why no one has previously
> dismissed
> the flimsy, improbable, and absurd arguments put forward by
> these critics. But as a consequence of the acceptance of these arguments,
> it is not
> now possible for any writer—or even group of writers—to prevent
> these false arguments being repeated in future, especially given
> their wide dissemination in popular and prestigious works of reference.
> Just as attributions of authorship, no matter how improbable or absurd,
> are repeated indefinitely (following the locution “sometimes attributed
> to”), _fanny_ is likely to travel through history followed by Partridge’s
> “perhaps,”
> Epstein’s “numerous commentators,” and Rothstein’s meditation
> on “Miss Fanny, &c.”
>
> LH
>
> > , _Fanny
> > Hill_ being the most notorious ex. of English um-literature of the age.
> >
> > If the name "Fanny" had been applied more or less arbitrarily as a
> childish
> > euphemism, its chance identity with the name of the fictional courtesan
> > would undoubtedly have helped its career.
> >
> > JL
> >
> > On Sat, Dec 15, 2012 at 4:14 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu
> >wrote:
> >
> >> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> >> -----------------------
> >> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> >> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> >> Subject:      Re: [off-list] Re: [ADS-L] "fanny", n.4
> >>
> >>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>
> >> On Dec 15, 2012, at 3:30 PM, ADSGarson O'Toole wrote:
> >>
> >>> Here is some more information from an entry in Jon Lighter's
> >>> masterwork: Historical Dictionary of American Slang:
> >>>
> >>> fanny n. [orig. unkn., but perh. cf. Fanny Hill (1748-49), erotic
> >>> novel by John Cleland]
> >>>
> >>> 1. the vulva or vagina. - usu. considered vulgar. [Chiefly BrE and
> >>> always rare in U.S. The *1882 quot. could possibly belong at (2),
> >>> below.]
> >>>
> >>> *ca 1835-40 in Speaight Bawdy Songs of Music Hall 76: I've got a
> >>> little Fanny,/That with hair is overspread. Ibid. 39: Johnny touched
> >>> her Fanny up. *1882 Boudoir 88: Come...feel our soft little fannys.
> >>>
> >>> *1889 Barrere & Leland Dict. Slang I 354: Fanny (common), the fern.
> pud.
> >> "fern. pud."  or "fem. pud."  I didn't know ferns were so equipped.
> >>>
> >> I seem to recall an earlier thread on the frontal "fanny", in which I
> >> mentioned that the "Fanny Hill" link--endorsed widely, by among others
> >> Geoffrey Hughes in his _Swearing_ (1991)--"The sense is surely implied
> in
> >> John Cleland’s _Fanny Hill_ [sic] (1749), a punning reference to Latin
> mons
> >> veneris)"--is highly dubious.  This point is made at length in a recent
> >> essay by Spedding & Lambert*, who argue convincingly that the name of
> the
> >> protagonist of _Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure_ cannot have been a
> >> deliberate reference to the sense in question, since there is no clear
> >> record of the fem. pud. meaning of "fanny" before that 1835-40
> collection
> >> cited in HDAS.  It's a nice paper, and quite convincing--at least to me.
> >>
> >> *Spedding, Patrick and James Lambert. 2011. Fanny Hill, Lord Fanny, and
> >> the myth of metonymy. Studies in Philology 108: 108-132.
> >>
> >> LH
> >>
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> >
> >
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> truth."
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