[Ads-l] Origin of the term "Cry Wolof"

Jesse Sheidlower jester at PANIX.COM
Tue Oct 6 18:46:15 UTC 2015


On Tue, Oct 06, 2015 at 02:39:16PM -0400, Ben Zimmer wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 6, 2015 at 2:32 PM, Jesse Sheidlower wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, Oct 06, 2015 at 01:59:27PM -0400, Ben Zimmer wrote:
> >>
> >> I believe Larry gets credit -- he used it in an ADS-L post on Dec. 6, 2004:
> >>
> >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2004-December/043326.html
> >>
> >> Then Jesse popularized it in his Slate piece published two days later:
> >>
> >> http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/hey_wait_a_minute/2004/12/crying_wolof.html
> >
> > Hmm. I'm rather sure that in the original piece, I explicitly gave
> > credit to Larry (perhaps in the author-bio section), but that seems to
> > have been removed. The oldest version on the Wayback Machine doesn't
> > show this credit, though.
> >
> > But in any case, since it doesn't show this on Slate, I will say here
> > that yes, I got the expression from Larry.
> 
> Yes, I remember that credit -- and the Wayback Machine did save it after all:
> 
> https://web.archive.org/web/20050911185519/http://www.slate.com/id/2110811/
> 
> "Jesse Sheidlower is editor-at-large of the Oxford English Dictionary.
> He thanks Yale linguist Laurence Horn for coining the phrase 'crying
> Wolof.'"

Ah, right, the URL structure changed, I didn't search properly. Thanks
for finding this, and thanks yet again to Larry for such a great title!

Jesse Sheidlower

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