Another non-metaphor

[Laurence Horn]

Oops, sorry.  Should have checked my mailer before posting.  Nevermind.

LH


On Jun 1, 2014, at 9:24 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

> See HDAS for "duck butter," which I've never heard used and which would
> seem more likely to mean "semen," at least originally. But we'll pass over
> that discussion.
>
> My grandmother (b. NYC, 1888) called the stuff in my eyes "sleep."
>
> JL
>
>
> On Sun, Jun 1, 2014 at 4:06 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject:      Re: Another non-metaphor
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 8:10 AM, Charles C Doyle <cdoyle at uga.edu> wrote:
>>
>>> "duck butter" refers to 'smegma'
>>
>>
>> Thanks, Charlie! I've wondered about that since I heard "duck butter" used
>> in Marshall, back in '48, where it definitely was *not* the same thing as
>> cat butter, but it was never clear to me exactly what duck butter was and
>> I've never heard either term used anywhere else.
>>
>> I wasn't in the habit of squaring off asking about something that was
>> apparently common knowledge to everyone else. Besides, I had become "a
>> stranger in my own hometown," as the blues line goes, by that time, living
>> in StL and only "summering" back down home in Marshall. Asking a dumb
>> question would have underlined my outsiderness.
>>
>>
>> --
>> -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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>>
>
>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
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