A recovered memory

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Sun Jun 24 19:30:16 UTC 2012


I've written, probably on one more than one occasion, that I didn't
know a BE word that is the equivalent of sE _hickey_, BE _hickey_
being used to name the consequence of having had one's head gone
upside. As I was falling a sleep, the other night, it suddenly came to
me that the BE word for sE _hickey_ is _cherry_.

BTW, lest anyone get the wrong idea - once, some white asshole
actually said to me, "You're lucky to be black, Wilson! Bruises don't
show up on *your* skin!" Aaarrggghhh! - despite what may seem
intuitively obvious, there is no human being with skin so dark that
the presence of a bruise is not immediately obvious to the most casual
of glances. A "cherry" on a black person's throat - even if he's
darker-complected than Wesley Snipes - is as  visible as a "hickey" on
a white person's throat is.

--
-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

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



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