antedating (?) "ass bandit"

Arnold Zwicky zwicky at STANFORD.EDU
Sun May 25 04:05:38 UTC 2014


On May 24, 2014, at 7:13 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:

>
> On Sat, May 24, 2014 at 8:17 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Note: HDAS was the  first work of historical lexicography to have cited
>> aircraft "nose art" from historical photographs.
>>
>
> Go 'head, Jon!
>
> But how do we know what "ass bandit" meant, During The War? I had to look
> it up in HDAS to see what it meant in 1954, the year that I graduated from
> high school, supposedly booted to the hip and hip to the haps.

could people be more direct in what they're saying? (to start with, my copy of HDAS is currently unavailable to me,so i'm guessing at what it says.)

my recollection was that back in the early 50s, an ass bandit was a guy who got a lot of ass --- roughly, and less crudely, a womanizer.  is that close to HDAS?

(predictably, i guess, there's now a man-on-man usage for the expression.  not relevant here.)

arnold

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