[Ads-l] intestinal/testicular fortitude

Neal Whitman nwhitman at AMERITECH.NET
Tue May 12 12:49:01 UTC 2015


Wasn't the teachers' complaint about Dizzy Dean's grammar a hoax? At least, that's what I read in O'Conner and Kellerman's _Origins of the Specious_.

Neal

> On May 11, 2015, at 5:10 PM, Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      intestinal/testicular fortitude
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> I have a post on the Lexicon Valley blog today about "testicular
> fortitude" (now in the news because Bill Simmons used it just before
> getting fired by ESPN):
> 
> http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2015/05/11/bill_simmons_testicular_fortitude_the_etymology_of_a_phrase_and_the_sensibilities.html
> 
> I start with "intestinal fortitude" as a euphemism for "guts"
> (credited to Ohio State football coach John Wilce, in print from
> 1921), which was malapropized as "testicle fortitude" by Dizzy Dean,
> before emerging as "testicular fortitude" (in print from 1971).
> 
> We discussed both kinds of fortitude about ten years ago on the list.
> 
> --bgz
> 
> -- 
> Ben Zimmer
> http://benzimmer.com/
> 
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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